Sr&^ 


BOOK    204. W38    c.  1 

WEBB    #    GOD    AND    PERSONALITY 


3    T1S3    OODbSOm    S 


LIBRARY    OF    PHILOSOPHY 

As  may  be  seen  from  the  original  programme  printed  in 
Erdmann's  History  of  Philosophy  under  the  date  1890,  the 
Library  of  Philosophy  was  designed  as  a  contribution  to  the 
History  of  Modern  Philosophy  under  the  heads  :  first  of 
different  Schools  of  Thought — Sensationalist,  Realist,  Idealist, 
Intuitivist  ;  secondly  of  different  Subjects — Psychology,  Ethics, 
Aesthetics,  Political  Philosophy,  Theology.  While  much  had 
been  done  in  England  in  tracing  the  course  of  evolution  in 
nature,  history,  economics,  morals  and  religion,  little  had 
been  done  in  tracing  the  development  of  thought  on  these 
subjects.  Yet  "  the  evolution  of  opinion  is  part  of  the  whole 
evolution." 

By  the  co-operation  of  different  writers  in  carrying  out  this 
plan  it  was  hoped  that  a  thoroughness  and  completeness  of 
treatment,  otherwise  unattainable,  might  be  secured.  It  was 
believed  also  that  from  writers  mainly  British  and  American 
fuller  consideration  of  English  Philosophy  than  it  had  hitherto 
received  might  be  looked  for.  In  the  earlier  series  of  books 
containing,  among  others,  Bosanquet's  History  of  .Esthetic, 
Pfleiderer's  Rational  Theology  since  Kant,  Albee's  History 
of  English  Utilitarianism,  Bonar's  Philosophy  and  Political 
Economy,  Brett's  History  of  Psychology,  Ritchie's  Natural 
Rights,  these  objects  were  to  a  large  extent  effected. 

In  the  meantime  original  work  of  a  high  order  was  being 
produced  both  in  England  and  America  by  such  writers  as 
Bradley,  Stout,  Bertrand  Russell,  Baldwin,  Urban,  Montague 
and  others,  and  a  new  interest  in  foreign  works,   German, 


French  and  Italian,  which  had  either  become  classical  or  were 
attracting  public  attention,  had  developed.  The  scope  of  the 
Librarv^  thus  became  extended  into  something  more  inter- 
national, and  it  is  entering  on  the  fifth  decade  of  its  existence 
in  the  hope  that  it  may  contribute  in  this  highest  field  of 
thought  to  that  Intellectual  Co-operation  which  is  one  of  the 
most  significant  objects  of  the  League  of  Nations  and  kindred 
organizations. 

GENERAL  EDITOR 
May  I,  1930. 


LIBRARY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

General  Editor  :  Professor  J.  H.  MUIRHEAD,  LL.D. 

ANALYTIC  PSYCHOLOGY     By  Prof.  G.  F.  Stout. 

Two  Vols.    5th  hnpression. 
ATTENTION  B5'Prof.W.B.PiLLSBURY.  2nd  Impression. 
HISTORY  OF  .ESTHETIC     By  B.  Bos.\nquet.     5th 

Impression.    4th  Edition. 
HISTORY   OF  ENGLISH   UTILITARIANISM      By 

Prof.  E.  Albee. 
HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY    By  J.  E.  Erdmann. 

Vol.   I.     Ancient  and  j\1edi/EVal.  5th  hnpression. 
Vol.  II.     Modern.     6th    Impression. 
Vol.  III.     Since  Hegel.     7th  Impression. 
HISTORY  OF  PSYCHOLOGY    By  Prof.  G.  S.  Brett. 
Vol.  I.     Ancient  and  Patristic. 
Vol,  II.     Medieval  and  Early  Modern  Period. 
Vol.  III.     Modern  Psychology. 
MATTER    AND    MEMORY       By  [Henri    Bergson 

Translated  by  N.  M.  Paul  and  W.  S.  Palmer.    4th 

Impression. 
NATURAL  RIGHTS    By  D.  G.  Ritchie.    3rd  Edition. 
PHILOSOPHY  AND  POLITICAL  ECONOxMY.     By 

Dr.  J.  BoNAR.    4th  Impression. 
DEVELOPMENT  OF  THEOLOGY  SINCE  KANT  By 

O.  Pfleiderer. 
THE  PHENOMENOLOGY  OF  MIND    By  G.  W.  F. 

Hegel.  Translated  by  Dr.  J.  B.  Baillie.  2nd  Edition. 
TIME  AND  FREE  WILL    By  Prof.  Henri  Bergson. 

Translated  by  F.  L.  Pogson.  5th  Impression. 
VALUATION:  THE  THEORY  OF  VALUE  By  Prof. 

W.  M.  Urban. 
THE    PSYCHOLOGY   OF  THE   RELIGIOUS  LIFE 

By  Prof.  G.  M.  Stratton.    2nd  Edition. 
THE  GREAT  PROBLEMS   By  Bernardino  Varisco. 

Translated  by  Prof.  R.  C.  Lodge. 
KNOW  THYSELF   By  Bernardino  Varisco.    Trans- 
lated by  Dr.  Guglielmo  Salvadori. 
ELEMENTS    OF    FOLK    PSYCHOLOGY        By  W. 

Wundt.     Translated  by  Prof.  Edward  L.  Schaub. 

3rd  Impression. 
ELEMENTS  OF  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHILOSOPHY  By 

Prof.  J.  S.  Mackenzie.   2nd  Impression. 
SOCIAL  PURPOSE    By  Dr.  H.  J.  W.  Hetherington 

and  Prof.  J.  H.  Muirhead.   2nd  Impression. 
INTRODUCTION  TO  MATHEMATICAL  PHILOSO- 
PHY By  Bertrand  Russell,  F.R.S.  3rd  Impression. 


LIBRARY   OF   PHILOSOPHY— co«/rf. 

GOD  AND  PERSONALITY  (Gifford  Lectures)  By 
Prof.  Clement  C.  J.  Webb.    (Part  I.)   3rd  Impression. 

DIVINE  PERSONALITY  AND  HUMAN  LIFE  (Gif- 
ford Lectures)  By  Prof.  Clement  C.  J.  Webb, 
(Part  II.)    2nd  Impression. 

MODERN  PHILOSOPHY  By  Gumo  de  Ruggiero. 
Translated    by    A.    Howard    Hannay    and    R.    G. 

COLLINGWOOD. 

THE  ANALYSIS  OF  MIND    By  Bertrand  Russell, 

F.R.S.    3rd  Impression. 
DIALOGUES    ON    METAPHYSICS       By    Nicolas 

Malebranche.    Translated  by  Morris  Ginsberg. 
INDIAN  PHILOSOPHY  By  Prof.  S.  Radhakrishnan. 

2nd  Edition.    Two  Vols. 
CONTEMPORARY  BRITISH  PHILOSOPHY    Edited 

by  Prof.  J.  H.  Muirhead,   Two  Vols. 
THE  WAYS  OF  KNOWING  :    or,  The  Methods  of 

Philosophy  By  Prof.  W.  P.  Montague.  2nd  Impres- 
sion. 
A    THEORY    OF    DIRECT    REALISM;     and    the 

Relation  of  Realism  to  Idealism  By  J.  E.  Turner. 
THE  GOOD  WILL  :  A  STUDY  IN  THE  COHERENCE 

THEORY  OF  GOODNESS   By  H.  J.  Baton. 
FUNDAMENTAL  PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  :    AN  ES- 
SAY ON  CITIZENSHIP  AS  PURSUIT  OF  VALUES 

By  Prof.  J.  S.  Mackenzie. 
THE    INTELLIGIBLE    WORLD:     METAPHYSICS 

AND  VALUE   By  Prof.  W.  M.  Urban. 
CONTEMPORARY    AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY 

Edited  by  Prof.  George  P.  Adams  and  Prof.  Wm. 

Pepperell  Montague.     Two  Vols. 
HEGEL'S  SCIENCE  OF  LOGIC   Translated  by  W.  H. 

Johnston  and  L.  G.  Struthers.     Two  Vols. 
IDENTITY  AND  REALITY     By  Emile  Meyerson. 

Translated  by  Kate  Loewenberg. 
MORAL  SENSE  By  James  Bonar. 
COLERIDGE  AS  PHILOSOPHER     By  Prof.  J.  H. 

Muirhead. 
IDEAS:     GENERAL    INTRODUCTION    TO    PURE 

PHENOMENOLOGY  By  Edmund  Husserl.  Trans- 
lated by  W.  R.  BoYCE  Gibson. 
THE  PLATONIC  TRADITION  IN  ANGLO-SAXON 

PHILOSOPHY    By  Prof.  J.  H.  Muirhead. 
ETHICS      By   Nicolai    Hartmann.      Translated    by 

Stanton  Coit.    Three  Vols. 
ESSENTIALS      IN      THE      DEVELOPMENT      OF 

RELIGION :   A   Philosophic    and    Psychological 

Study     By  J.  E.  Turner. 


Xtbrari?  of  pbiloeopb^. 

EDITED  BY  J.  H.  MUIRHEAD,  LL.D. 


GOD    AND    PERSONALITY 


By  the  same  author 

RELIGION   AND   THEISM 

DIVINE  PERSONALITY 

GROUP  THEORIES   OF   RELIGION 


GOD  AND  PERSONALITY  \^\ 

BEING    THE    GIFFORD    LECTURES  /t 

DELIVERED  IN    THE    UNIVERSITY  OF  \^l    \ 

ABERDEEN  IN  THE  YEARS  1918  &  1919 

FIRST    COURSE 


CLEMENT    C.   J.    WEBB 

Fellow  of  St.   Mary   Magdalen   College,   Oxford 


LONDON  :  GEORGE    ALLEN    &   UNWIN  LTD. 
NEW   YORK:    THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 


First  published  April  1919 
Second  Impression  June  1920 
Third  Impression  August  1934 


[A  II  rights  reserved) 


PRINTED    IN    GREAT    BRITAIN    BY 
HENDERSON    AND    SPALDING   LTD    LONDON    SEX  5 


Dedicated 

IN  Affectionate  Gratitude 

TO  THE  Memory  of 

a  Great  Thinker  and  a  Great  Teacher, 

JOHN   COOK   WILSON. 

SOMETIME   WyKEHAM    PROFESSOR    OF   LoGIC 

IN  THE  University  of  Oxford 


PREFACE 

In  giving  these  Lectures  to  the  public,  I  desire  in  the  first 
place  to  express  my  sincere  thanks  to  the  Senatus  Aca- 
demicus  of  the  University  of  Aberdeen,  who,  by  honouring 
me  with  their  invitation  to  fill  a  place  which  has  been 
filled  in  the  past  by  men  of  my  unworthiness  to  succeed 
whom  I  am  acutely  sensible,  have  given  me  a  welcome 
opportunity  of  drawing  together  my  thoughts,  such  as 
they  are — and  I  am  very  well  aware  of  their  inadequacy 
— upon  a  subject  of  central  importance  in  the  Philosophy 
of  Religion,  and  of  deep  concern  to  many  persons  who, 
while  laying  no  claim  to  philosophical  culture,  are  anxious 
to  form  a  reasonable  judgment  of  the  value  to  be  attached 
to  the  reUgious  language  and  imagery  with  which  they 
are  familiar. 

In  the  second  place,  I  have  to  thank  my  own  College 
in  Oxford  for  generously  granting  me  leave  of  absence  in 
term  time  to  enable  me  to  avail  myself  of  the  invitation 
I  had  received  from  Aberdeen. 

Lastly,  I  wish  to  acknowledge  the  manifold  help  which 
I  have  received  from  my  wife  in  the  work  of  preparing 
the  Lectures  alike  for  delivery  and  for  publication. 

A  correspondent  of  an  Aberdeen  journal  which  did 
me  the  honour  of  printing  very  full  reports  of  my  Lectures 
quoted    as   a    comment    upon    them    and    upon     Gifford 


8  PREFACE 

Lectures  generally  the  famous  lines  beginning  '  Myself, 
when  young,  did  eagerly  frequent.'  I  may  perhaps  take 
occasion  here  to  say  that  it  never  occurred  to  me  that 
such  discussions  as  these  could  be  other  than  '  about  it 
and  about '  or  could,  under  the  most  favourable  cir- 
cumstances, be  of  service  in  the  way  of  reUgion  to  any  one 
except  by  assisting  towards  the  expression  oi  defence  of 
a  religious  experience  of  which  the  hearer  or  reader  was 
already  in  possession. 

I  am  greatly  indebted  to  my  friend  and  former  pupil, 
Professor  Loveday,  for  his  kindness  in  reading  the  proofs 
of  this  book  and  for  making  a  number  of  valuable 
suggestions  for  its  improvement. 


SYLLABUS 


LECTURE   I 

PAGE 

The  Subject  Proposed     .......       17 

Our  subject  to  be  Personality  and  especially  the  place 
to  be  assigned  to  it  in  our  conception  of  God.  Individu- 
ality, but  not  Personality,  has  already  been  treated  by 
Gifford  Lecturers.  The  distinction  illustrated  by  the 
difference  of  view  between  Lotze  and  Mr.  Bosanquet,  the 
former  attributing  Personality,  the  latter  denying  Person- 
ality but  attributing  Individuality  to  the  Absolute.  Per- 
sonahty  in  God  to  be  discussed  before  Personality  in 
man.  This  order  of  treatment  defended  on  grounds 
historical  and  philosophical.  The  problem  of  Person- 
ality indicated  by  Dr.  Merz  as  that  to  which  we  are  invited 
by  the  course  taken  by  the  history  of  thought  during  the 
last  half-century.  Embarrassment  alike  of  the  scientific 
and  the  philosophical  movements  of  this  period  in  the 
presence  of  this  problem  ;  which  has  also  been  raised  for 
many  in  an  acute  manner  by  the  present  war.  The  fact 
that  the  history  of  the  notion  of  Personahty  will  compel 
us  to  deal  with  the  theological  doctrines  of  Christianity 
suggests  a  digression  on  the  attitude  to  be  adopted  in 
these  Lectures  towards  those  doctrines.  Programme 
of  the  following  Lectures. 

LECTURE   II 

History  of  the  Notion  of  Personality  in  General  35 

Persona  in  classical  Latin.  The  modern  meaning  of  the 
word  Person  is  conditioned  by  its  theological  use  as  equi- 
valent to  vTTOffTaniQ-  Original  meaning  of  v-rroaTaaiQ- 
Substantia,  though  probably  at  first  intended  as  a  trans- 


10  SYLLABUS 

PAGE 

lation  of  it,  comes  to  be  used  render  ovnia-  History  of 
the  philosophical  use  of  v-n-oaraaig  and  its  relation  to 
oixTia  and  liroKti^ivov.  Difference  in  meaning  between 
ovaia  and  viT()<TTaaiQ  utilized  in  the  formulation  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  Substantia  being 
already  appropriated  to  represent  ovtria  in  Latin,  another 
word  was  required  to  correspond  with  v-KoaraaiQ  and  was 
found,  probably  by  TertuUian,  in  persona ;  of  which 
iTp6(TU)iTov,  in  its  theological  use,  seems  to  be  a  translation. 
The  words  persona  and  vnotrratnq,  as  applied  to  the  dis- 
tinctions recognized  by  Christian  theology  within  the 
Godhead,  supplement  one  another,  each  suggesting  some- 
thing which  the  other  fails  to  suggest.  The  philosophical 
use  of  Person  begins  in  its  theological  use  and  is  expressed 
in  the  definition  of  Boethius,  Persona  est  naturae  ration- 
dbilis  individua  substantia.  The  attribution  to  the 
Absolute  of  Personality  by  Lotze.  and  of  Individuality, 
but  not  of  Personality,  by  Mr.  Bosanquet,  is  partly  ex- 
plained by  the  adherence  of  the  latter  to  the  juridical 
associations  of  the  word  Person,  which  for  Lotze  do  not 
determine  its  meaning.  The  history  of  the  notion  of 
Personality  after  the  time  of  Boethius  marked  by  the  stress 
laid  successively  on  incommunicability  (among  the  School- 
men), on  self -consciousness  (since  Descartes),  and  on  will 
(since  Kant),  as  characteristics  of  PersonaUty. 

LECTURE   III 

History  of  the  Notion  of   Personality   as   Applied   to 

God         .........       6i 

The  expression  '  Personality  of  God  '  of  modern  origin. 
In  Christianity,  the  only  religion  which  has  expressly 
affirmed  PersonaUty  to  be  in  God,  this  afi&rmation  was 
until  recent  times  made  only  in  connexion  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  ;  for  even  the  Socinian  assertion  that  God 
is  one  person  was  originally  brought  forward  merely  as  a 
correction  of  the  Trinitarian  formula,  not  as  the  enunci- 
ation of  an  important  fundamental  truth.  Influences 
tending  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
to  detach  the  thought  of  Personality  in  God  from  Trini- 
tarian associations,  and  so  preparing  the  way  for  the  now 
familiar  expression  '  Personality  of  God.'  An  examina- 
tion of  various  accounts  of  the  divine  nature,  undertaken 
with  the  view  of  satisfying  ourselves  whether  they  could 
be  descrJbed  as  accounts  of  a  '  personal  God,'  leads  to  the 


SYLLABUS  11 


PAGE 


result  that  only  so  far  as  personal  relations  are  allowed  to 
exist  between  the  worshipper  and  his  God  can  that  God 
be  properly  described  as  '  personal  '  ;  and  that  such  per- 
sonal relations  are  excluded  alike  by  extreme  stress  on 
the  '  immanence  '  and  by  extreme  stress  on  the  '  tran- 
scendence' of  the  object  of  worship.  This  conclusion  is 
illustrated  by  a  review  of  certain  great  religious  systems. 


LECTURE   IV 

Personality  and  Individuality    .....  89 

The  Boethian  definition  being  taken  as  a  provisional 
starting-point,  the  question  is  raised  of  the  relation  of 
Personality  to  Individuality,  which  is  there  described  as 
a  factor  in  it.  All  persons  are  individual  but  only  rational 
individuals  are  persons.  The  antithesis  of  individual 
and  universal  is  considered,  and  while  certain  ways  of 
thinking  which  appear  to  rest  on  a  confusion  of  the  two 
are  criticized,  it  is  maintained  that  reaUty  is  throughout 
and  at  every  point  both  the  one  and  the  other.  Persons 
are  individuals  conscious  of  universality,  such  conscious- 
ness occurring  only  when  Individuality  has  attained  a 
certain  level  of  development  or  evolution.  The  thought 
of  a  perfect  IndividuaUty,  in  comparison  with  which  our 
PersonaUty  is  imperfect,  raises  again  the  question  at 
issue  between  Lotze  and  Mr.  Bosanquet,  whether  such 
an  Individuality  should  be  called  '  personal.'  It  is  found 
that  the  answer  will  depend  upon  the  rank  assigned  to 
ethical  predicates  in  the  scale  of  values. 

LECTURE   V 

Personality  and  Rationality  .....     109 

Rationality  the  other  factor  in  Personality  beside  Indi- 
viduality recognized  in  the  Boethian  definition.  Yet  what 
is  rational  seems  to  be  that  in  which  personal  differences 
disappear,  and  we  are  apt  to  explain  as  especially  personal 
what  is  not  rationally  exphcable  in  human  conduct.  This 
'  irrationality  of  the  personal '  the  chief  inspiration  alike 
of  the  demand  for  a  personal  God  and  of  the  reluctance 
of  many  to  admit  that  demand  to  be  legitimate.  This 
reluctance  natural   from   the   point   of   view   of   Natural 


12  SYLLABUS 

PAGE 

Science,  which  treats  the  '  personal  equation  '  as  some- 
thing to  be  discounted,  of  a  philosophy  which  looks  on 
Natural  Science  as  the  type  of  true  knowledge,  and  also 
of  such  a  philosophy  as  Fichte's,  which  represents  the 
supreme  system  of  ReaUty  as  a  '  moral  order.'  But  a 
philosophy  like  Mr.  Bosanquet's,  which  does  not  so  repre- 
sent it,  will  refuse  to  ascribe  personality  to  the  Ultimate 
Reality,  because  it  must  transcend  moral  distinct'ons, 
whereas  Personality  and  Morality  go  (as  we  saw)  together. 
It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  finite  personality  cannot 
be  ascribed  to  the  Absolute  ;  but  what  is  really  meant 
by  the  attribution  of  personality  to  God  is  the  affirmation 
that  reciprocal  personal  relations  may  exist  between  the 
worshipper  and  him ;  and  it  is  sometimes  sought  to 
evade  the  difficulty  of  affirming  this  in  the  case  of  the 
Absolute  by  distinguishing  God  from  the  Absolute  and 
allowing  God  to  be  a  finite  person.  The  next  Lecture  to 
be  devoted  to  the  consideration  of  this  suggestion. 

LECTURE   VI 

The  Doctrine  of  a  Finite  God        .....     134 

It  is  sometimes  thought  that  the  doctrine  of  a  Finite 
God  would  satisfy  the  claims  at  once  of  Religion  and  of 
Metaphysics.  This  conception  appears  in  several  forms. 
Three  of  these  we  may  conveniently  associate  with  the 
names  of  Mr.  Bradley,  Dr.  Rashdall,  and  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells 
respectively.  The  second  and  third  of  these,  it  is  con- 
tended, fail  because  they'  abandon  the  attempt  to 
identify  God  with  the  Absolute,  and  in  so  doing,  abandon 
what  is  essential  to  Religion  when  once  the  stage  of 
intellectual  development  is  reached  at  which  the  question 
of  this  identification  can  be  raised.  By  Mr.  Bradley,  on 
the  other  hand,  this  failure  is  admitted  and  the  conse- 
quence proclaimed  that  Religion,  like  other  forms  of 
experience,  is  bound  to  break  down  under  metaphysical 
criticism  and  stand  convicted  of  involving  a  contradiction. 
After  a  full  examination  of  this  view,  which  leads  inci- 
dentally to  a  discussion  of  the  antithesis  of  '  imma- 
nence '  and  '  transcendence,'  the  conclusion  is  reached 
that  Religion  implies  a  paradox  but  not  a  contradiction, 
and  that  there  is  no  necessary  inconsistency  between 
the  recognition  that  the  object  of  religious  experience 
is  the  supreme  Reality  and  the  recognition  that  this  ex- 
perience is  an  experience  of  personal  relations  with   its 


SYLLABUS  18 


PAGE 


object ;  nor  yet  between  a  personal  intercourse  of  the 
worshipper  with  his  God  and  the  immanence  of  that  God 
in  his  worshipper.  The  difficulties  encountered  in  the 
course  of  this  examination  nevertheless  press  upon  us  the 
problem  of  the  best  language  for  expressing  the  depend- 
ence upon  the  Divine  Spirit  of  the  finite  spirits  which 
are  conscious  of  standing  in  personal  relations  with  him. 

LECTURE   VII 

The  Problem  of  Creation        ......     156 

Of  metaphors  which  may  be  used  to  express  the  relation 
of  the  Divine  Spirit  to  our  spirits,  that  of  creation  empha- 
sizes the  difference,  and  those  of  generation  and  emanation 
the  identity  between  the  two  terms  of  the  relation.  Thus 
the  first  will  be  appropriate  to  a  doctrine  which  lays  stress 
on  divine  transcendence.  Such  Scholasticism  is  said  to 
have  been,  and  we  see  an  extreme  recoil  from  its  position 
in  this  respect  in  the  philosophy  of  Signor  Croce,  which 
does  not  allow  Religion  to  be  anything  but  an  immature 
form  of  Philosophy.  An  attempt  to  unite  the  advantages 
of  the  metaphors  of  creation  and  procreation  by  the  con- 
ception of  a  Mediator,  who  is  the  Sow  of  God  and  so  dis- 
tinguished from  created  spirits.  Such  a  conception  may 
be  objected  to  as  (i)  mythological,  (2)  logically  leading  to 
an  infinite  regress. 

1.  It  may  be  regarded  as  a  myth,  but  in  the  sense 
which  Plato  gives  to  the  word,  a  sense  in  which  myth 
has  a  legitimate  place  in  philosophy.  As  is  shown 
by  the  examination  of  Plato's  usage,  it  is  proposed  to 
employ  it  just  where  Plato  would  employ  a  myth,  in 
dealing  with  the  nature  of  the  Soul,  which  is  the  meeting- 
place  of  Universal  and  Individual,  of  Philosophy  and 
History.  The  conception  will  be  found  apt  to  help  us  in 
expressing  our  relation  to  God  in  terms  which  avoid 
encouraging  either  an  irreligious  pride  or  an  abject  servility. 

2.  It  need  not  lead  to  an  infinite  regress.  Such  a 
regress  only  becomes  inevitable  when  there  is  no  ground 
for  introducing  a  middle  term  between  two  others  which 
is  not  equally  a  ground  for  introducing  a  further  middle 
term  between  the  first  middle  term  and  either  of  the 
extremes.  But  in  the  present  instance  this  is  not  the 
case.  The  Mediator  represented  as  the  archetjrpe  and 
ideal  completion  of  the  nature  found  to  exist  imperfectly 


14  SYLLABUS 

PAGE 

in  finite  souls.  But  a  new  complication  is  introduced  when 
the  latter  are  regarded  as  not  only  imperfect  but  sinful ; 
and  we  are  constrained  to  pass  on  to  the  problem  of  Sin. 

LECTURE   VIII 

The  Problem  of  Sin         .         .         .         .         .         .         .184 

A  general  discussion  of  the  Problem  of  Evil  not  to  be 
attempted  here,  but  only  of  the  bearing  of  our  conscious- 
ness of  moral  Evil  or  Sin  upon  our  conception  of  Divine 
Personality.  It  is  true  that  what  would  be  a  criminal 
act,  if  brought  about  by  a  person,  is  not  blamed  when  due 
to  a  natural  force  or  the  activity  of  an  irrational  animal. 
But  to  extend  this  to  an  assertion  that  there  is  no  question 
of  Evil  in  the  world,  if  the  cause  of  the  world  be  not  re- 
garded as  personal,  is  a  piece  of  illegitimate  reasoning  The 
question  of  the  significance  to  be  assigned  to  our  moral 
consciousness  in  the  formation  of  a  general  view  of  the 
world  cannot  be  put  aside  altogether.  To  a  view  which 
assigns  it  no  significance  beyond  the  sphere  of  human 
action  the  world  must  appear  fundamentally  irrational 
and  incoherent.  Hence  the  denial  of  Divine  Personality 
does  not  enable  us  to  rid  ourselves  of  the  problem  of  the 
existence  of  Evil.  On  the  other  hand  a  religious  experi- 
ence which  implies  a  personal  relation  of  our  souls  to  God, 
if  it  gives  to  the  sense  of  Sin  a  peculiar  poignancy,  yet 
provides  it  with  a  more  intelligible  setting  than  it  has  in 
any  other  connexion.  Those  who,  while  attributing  per- 
sonality to  God,  would  relieve  him  of  responsibility  for 
the  evil  in  the  world  by  refusing  to  identify  him  with  the 
Absolute,  do  so  at  the  cost  of  denying  him  Godhead  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word.  After  a  consideration  of  the 
extent  to  which  our  consciousness  of  Sin  must  modify  the 
conception  adopted  in  the  last  Lecture  of  the  relation 
between  our  spirits  and  the  Divine  Spirit,  we  pa^s  to  an 
examination  of  Signor  Croce's  teaching  with  its  extreme 
doctrine  of  immanence  and  reach  the  conclusion  that  a 
religious  experience  implying  a  personal  relation  of  our 
souls  to  God  affords  a  clue  to  the  solution  of  the  antinomy 
between  a  realized  perfection  and  an  eternal  activity  in 
God,  and  that  in  the  light  of  this  experience  the  mystery 
involved  in  that  antinomy  will  be  found  not  so  much  to 
baffle  reason  as  to  enlarge  its  scope  and  opportunity. 


SYLLABUS  15 


LECTURE   IX 

PAGE 

Religion  and  Philosophy 213 

The  problem  of  Personality  in  God  is  at  bottom  the  same 
as  that  of  the  distinction  of  God  from  the  Absolute,  and 
also  as  that  of  the  relation  of  Rehgion  to  Philosophy. 
Though  Religion  may  exist  apart  from  the  affirmation  of 
Personality  in  God,  yet  the  presence  of  an  emotion  of 
reverence  akin  to  that  experienced  towards  persons  is  a 
mark  distinguishing  Religion  from  Philosophy,  which  are 
both  of  them  concerned  with  the  Supreme  Reality  ;  for 
although  what  is  known  to  be  less  than  this  may  receive 
religious  honour,  only  to  that  which  is  taken  to  be  this  can 
the  greatest  religious  reverence  be  paid  in  the  end  ;  nor 
acn  the  religious  consciousness  forbear  the  demand  that 
the  Supreme  God  should  be  the  Supreme  Reality.    On  the 
other  hand,  apart  from  the  religious  consciousness  the 
Absolute  cannot  be  known  as  God.     Hence  Religion  and 
Philosophy  are  intimately  connected,  yet  always  distinct. 
The  Absolute  being  the  ultimate  principle  of  unity  reached 
in  the  search  characteristic  of  Philosophy  for  the  One  in 
the  Many,  we  may  inquire  what  light  can  be  thrown  upon 
its  nature  by  the  study  of  subordinate  principles  of  unity, 
and  how  far  it  can  be  described  in  terms  borrowed  from 
our  acquaintance  with  any  of  these.     It  cannot  be  ade- 
quately described  as  the  Universal  or  as  Substance,  or 
even,  despite  the  eloquent  advocacy  of  M.   Bergson,  as 
Life  ;  although  this  last  description  may  serve  a  useful 
purpose  in  purging  from  undesirable  accretions  what  is 
yet  in  the  end  the  more  satisfactory  account  of  it  as 
Reason  and  Goodness  in  that  close  mutual  union  assigned 
to  them  in  the  Platonic  philosophy.  Yet  even  this  account, 
as  given  by  Plato,  calls  for  a  further  development,  which 
is  in  principle  supplied  in  the  identification,  established 
with   the    help    of    religious    experience    on   a   Platonic 
foundation  by  Christian  theology,  of  the  living  God,  who 
in  Plato's  system  is  to  the  end  less  than  the  Good,  with 
the  Good  which  is  in  that  system  the  Supreme  Reality. 
Here  we  reach  a  definite  contribution  made  by  reUgious 
experience  to  our  conception  of  the  supreme  principle 
of  unity. 


16  SYLLABUS 


LECTURE   X 

VAOB 

Divine  Personality  .         .         .         .         .         .         .241 

Religious   Experience,    on   which   it   is   rightly   claimed 
that  theology  should  be  based,  is  not  to  be  sought  only 
in  records  of  conversion  or  of  mystical  raptures,  but  in 
the  public  theologies  and  ecclesiastical  polities  wherein 
may  be  read  "  writ  large  "  the  normal  religious  experience 
of   the   peoples   among   whom   they   have   arisen.     The 
student  of  Natural  Theology  should  seek  to  discover  the 
universal  significance  of  the  tradition  which  he  himself 
inherits  ;  and  need  not  suppose  that  to  classify  religious 
experiences   as    '  higher  '  or   '  lower '   is  to  abandon  the 
ideal  of  Natural  Theology  as  expressing  the  outcome  of 
reflection  on  the  whole  religious  experience  of  mankind. 
He  must,  however,  use  for  his  classification  a  suitable 
criterion  ;  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  capacity  of  a  religion 
to  encourage  and  be  encouraged  by  moral  and  intellectual 
progress  in  its  votaries,  yet  only  so  far  as  this  is  done  by 
exhibiting  the  specific  nature  of  Religion  in  a  particular 
manner.     No   historic  religion    has   maintained   and    de- 
veloped  itself   in    an    atmosphere   of    higher  intellectual 
and  moral  culture  than  Christianity,  which  more  than  any 
other  has  laid  stress  upon  personality  in  God  ;  and  this 
stress  is  no  extrinsic  or  accidental  feature  of  this  religion, 
but  the  fuller  development  of  a  factor  to  some  degree 
present  in  all  Religion,  viz.  the  doctrine  of  divine  tran- 
scendence.    The  recognition  of  personality  in  God  adds 
to  the  intelligibility  and  moral  efficacy  of  such  religious 
ideas    as    those    of    Sin,  Forgiveness,  Justice,    Sacrifice, 
Union ;  and  although  the  language  of   Religion  is  always 
metaphorical,    we   must   distinguish   the   metaphor   with 
which  it  can  dispense  without  danger  to  its  claim  to  be 
real  experience  and  that  which  is  its  only  means  of  de- 
scribing  it.     The   difficulty  of  ascribing   Personality   to 
God,  arising  from  what  we  called  in  a  former  lecture  '  the 
irrationaUty  of  the  personal,'  met  by  the  consideration 
that  Reason  as  manifested  in  the  artist  affords  a  better 
analogy  for  use  in  that  connexion  than  Reason  as  mani- 
fested by  the  mathematician  or  the  moralist ;    especially 
if  the  notion  of  Evolution  is  to  be  taken  seriously.     The 
Lecture  concludes  with  some  remarks  on  the  relation  of 
this  account  of  Divine  Personality  to  that  contained  in 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 


GOD  AND  PERSONALITY 

LECTURE   I 

THE  SUBJECT  PROPOSED 

In  these  two  courses  of  Lectures  on  the  foundation  of 
Lord  Gifford,  I  propose  to  consider  the  subject  of  Per- 
sonality and  especially  the  place  to  be  assigned  to  Person- 
ality in  our  conception  of  the  nature  of  God,  the  know- 
ledge of  whose  nature  and  attributes  is,  according  to  the 
will  of  the  Founder,  to  be  the  theme  of  the  Gifford 
Lecturers. 

In  looking  over  the  titles  of  previous  courses  of  Gifford 
Lectures  I  do  not  find  the  words  Person  or  Personality 
occurring,  but  I  find  more  than  once  the  words  Individual 
and  Individuality.  The  remarkable  series  delivered  at 
Aberdeen  by  the  eminent  American  philosopher,  whose 
loss  we  have  since  had  to  lament,  Josiah  Royce,  dealt 
with  The  World  and  the  Individual  ^  ;  the  distinguished 
German  biologist  Professor  Driesch  discoursed  in  the 
same  University  on  The  Science  and  Philosophy  of  the 
Organism,^  a  topic  which  he  subsequently  resumed  in  a 
work  called  The  Problem  of  Individuality ;  3  while  at 
Edinburgh  Dr.  Bernard  Bosanquet  took  for  the  subject 

'  1900  and   1901.  '  1907  and   1908.  3  London,  1914. 

17 


18  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

of  one  course  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value, ^ 
and  of  another  The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individuals 
It  is  obvious  that  the  topic  of  Individuahty  is  near  akin 
to  that  of  Personality,  and  in  the  lectures  to  which  I 
have  referred  the  lecturers  had  certainly  chiefly  though 
not  solely  in  view  those  Individuals  which  we  call  Persons. 
But  I  think  that  there  is  still  room  for  a  discussion  of 
Personality  on  its  own  account.  For  it  would  be  readily 
allowed  that  not  all  Individuals  are  Persons  ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  may  speak  of  Personality  as  belonging 
to  beings  which  we  should  not  naturally  or  unhesitatingly 
call  Individuals.  Thus,  on  the  one  hand,  some  psycholo- 
gists speak  of  alternating  personalities  in  one  and  the 
same  individual ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  often 
maintained  that  a  community  such  as  a  State,  though 
consisting  of  many  individuals,  may  be  said  to  possess 
Personality. 

Again,  it  may  be  observed  that,  while  it  would  not 
be  disputed  that  only  to  individuals  occupying  a  high 
grade  in  the  scale  of  existence  would  the  title  of  persons 
be  usually  given,  yet  some  thinkers,  such  as  Mr.  Bosanquet, 
would  strenuously  deny  the  applicability  of  that  title  to 
the  Ultimate  Reality  or  the  Absolute,  while  they  would, 
on  the  contrary,  maintain  that  it  is  only  of  the  Absolute 
that  Individuality  in  its  full  sense  is  predicable.^ 

Nor  have  we  to  do  with  a  mere  preference  of  one  form 
of  words  to  another  when  we  find  a  philosopher  with 
whose  works  Mr.  Bosanquet  is  so  familiar  and  in  many 
ways  so  sympathetic  as  Lotze  saying,  not  of  Individuality 
but   of   Personality,   just   what   Mr.    Bosanquet   says   of 

4  1911.  5  1912. 

6  See  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  72  :  "  In  the 
ultimate  sense  there  can  be  only  one  Individual." 


THE   SUBJECT  PROPOSED  19 

Individuality,  that  it  is  properly  attributable  to  the 
Supreme  Reality  only. 7  In  the  difference  between  the 
two  ways  of  speaking  there  finds  expression  a  profound 
divergence  of  view  between  the  two  philosophers.  While, 
then,  a  discussion  of  Individuality  and  a  discussion  of 
Personality  must  obviously  to  a  considerable  extent 
occupy  common  ground,  we  shall  find  that,  in  consequence 
of  choosing  Personality  rather  than  Individuality  as  our 
main  topic,  we  shall  be,  as  it  were,  moving  over  that 
ground  in  a  somewhat  different  direction  from  that 
taken  by  those  who  have  preferred  to  concern  them- 
selves primarily  with  Individuality.  In  particular  I  shall 
endeavour  to  keep  in  close  touch  with  the  problem  sug- 
gested by  the  expression,  now  so  famihar,  '  a  personal 
God,'  and  shall  make  it  my  principal  business  to  examine 
what  is  involved  aUke  in  the  demand  for  '  a  personal  God  ' 
and  in  the  rejection  of  that  demand,  and  to  arrive  at  some 
conclusion  as  to  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  controversy 
between  those  who  ascribe  and  those  who  refuse  to  ascribe 
Personality  to  God.  I  say  to  God,  not  to  the  Absolute 
or  the  Ultimate  Reality  ;  for  we  shall  find  that  there 
are  not  a  few  who  would  allow  or  even  insist  upon  the 
ascription  of  Personality  to  God,  but  only  if  by  '  God  ' 
they  may  be  understood  to  mean  something  other  than 
the  Ultimate  Reality  ;  while  they  agree  with  those  who 
would  altogether  repudiate  faith  in  a  '  personal  God,' 
in  denying  Personality  to  the  Absolute. 

It  might  seem  that  I  should  be  following  the  most 
natural  and  convenient  course  for  such  a  discussion  as 
I  am  proposing  to  undertake  if  I  were  to  begin  with  an 
examination  of  what  we  mean  by  Personality  in  ourselves 

7  See  Microcosmus,  ix.  4,Eng.  tr.  ii.  p.  688  :  "  Perfect  Personality 
is  in  God  only." 


20  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

and  to  pass  thence  to  an  inquiry  as  to  the  legitimacy  of 
extending  the  conception  to  that  in  which  we  "  Hve  and 
move  and  have  our  being."  We  should  thus,  it  may  be 
thought,  be  starting  from  the  firm  ground  of  that  which 
hes  nearest  to  ourselves,  and  beginning  with  the  primary 
object  of  the  conception  we  have  set  ourselves  to  consider. 
To  begin  with  God,  however  accordant  with  the  custom 
of  antiquity  or  with  the  piety  of  Dogberry, ^  might  seem 
an  unpromising  method  of  procedure  for  any  one  who  hopes 
to  reach  an  assured  and  scientific  conclusion.  Neverthe- 
less I  propose  to  devote  my  first  course  to  the  topic  of 
Personality  in  God  and  the  second  to  that  of  Personality 
in  man,  and  must  therefore  endeavour  to  justify  as  best 
I  can  the  order  which  1  have  adopted. 

My  grounds  for  adopting  it  are  of  two  kinds  :  historical 
and  philosophical.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  will  be  found 
on  inquiry  that  not  only  has  the  development  of  the 
conception  of  personaHty  been  profoundly  affected  by  the 
discussions  which  were  carried  on  in  the  Christian  Church 
concerning  the  mutual  relations  of  the  persons  of  the 
Trinity  and  the  union  of  the  divine  and  human  natures 
in  the  person  of  Christ,  but  that  philosophical  discussion 
of  the  nature  of  human  PersonaUty  is  posterior  in  time  to 
these  theological  discussions.  Nay,  it  may  even  be  said 
that  it  was  the  religious  and  theological  interest  in  the 
PersonaUty  of  Christ,  conceived  as  being  at  once  God  and 
man,  which  actually  afforded  the  motive  and  occasion  of 
undertaking  the  investigation  of  the  nature  of  Personality 
in  men  generally.  In  placing  therefore  the  considera- 
tion of  Personality  in  God  before  consideration  of  the 
Personality  in  man,  I  shall  be,  at  any  rate,  following  the 
clue  given  by  the  history  of  thought.  But  there  are 
>  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  Act  IV,  Sc.  2. 


THE   SUBJECT  PROPOSED  21 

reasons  of  a  more  philosophical  order  which  may  be 
alleged  in  support  of  my  procedure.  Personality  is  not 
merely  something  which  we  observe  in  men  ;  rather  it 
is  something  which,  though  suggested  to  us  by  what 
we  find  in  men,  we  perceive  to  be  only  imperfectly  realized 
in  them  ;  and  this  can  only  be  because  we  are  somehow 
aware  of  a  perfection  or  ideal  with  which  we  contrast 
what  we  find  in  men  as  falling  short  of  it.  In  such  cases 
we  rightly  begin  with  thinking  out  the  ideal  and  then 
considering  the  experienced  facts  in  the  light  of  it.  We 
deal  thus  even  with  such  a  notion  as  that  of  Straightness 
in  geometry,  into  our  conception  of  which  there  does  not 
enter  that  element  of  value  which  is  involved,  for  example, 
in  our  notion  of  Justice  or  of  Courage.  It  is,  however, 
to  this  latter  class  of  objects  of  thought,  the  class  of  what 
we  may  call  ideals,  that  Personality  belongs  ;  although 
I  should  readily  admit  that  it  is  not  to  be  conceived  with 
the  same  definiteness  and  precision  and  consequently 
with  so  large  a  measure  of  general  agreement  as  Justice 
or  Courage. 

Such  a  consideration  of  Personality  as  what  it  is  in 
itself,  apart  from  what  appear  as  obstacles  and  hindrances 
to  its  full  realization  extraneous  to  its  proper  nature, 
when  thus  undertaken  prior  to  any  consideration  of 
it  under  hmiting  and  qualifying  circumstances,  quite 
naturally  assumes  the  form  of  a  discussion  of  Personality 
in  God  :  and  this  is  not  to  be  distinguished  from  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  place  and  value  of  Personality  in  the 
universe.  For  the  view  that  God,  the  Supreme  Reality, 
has  personality,  not  only  in  the  sense  in  which  the  Absolute 
must  possess  all  excellences  which  belong  to  any  form  of 
reality  embraced  within  its  systematic  unity,  but  properly 
and  pre-eminently  ;    and  the  view  that  it  is  possessed  by 


22  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

a  Being  or  Beings  of  far  higher  rank  and  more  enduring 
significance  in  the  scale  of  existence  than  men,  but  cannot 
be  affirmed  of  the  all-embracing  Reality,  A\ithin  the  unity 
of  which  men  and  such  a  higher  Being  or  Beings  would 
be  distinguishable  elements,  factors  or  moments  ;  lastly, 
the  view  that  only  of  beings  like  men,  the  unstable  product 
of  certain  rare  and  transient  conditions  which  are  found 
to  have  presented  themselves  in  a  certain  region  within 
the  infinity  of  Space,  at  a  certain  period  within  the  infinity 
of  Time,  can  Personality  be  intelligibly  affirmed :  all 
these  views  are  at  once  replies  to  the  question  Is  there  a 
personal  God,  and  if  so,  in  what  sense  ?  and  also  to  the 
question.  What  is  the  rank  or  significance  of  Personality 
in  the  universe  ?  I  would  also  here  take  occasion  to  point 
out  that  the  order  of  treatment  which  I  have  chosen 
does  not  necessarily  commit  him  who  chooses  it  to  the 
belief  that  Religion,  as  an  attitude  towards  something 
other  than  ourselves,  has  objective  value.  For  one  might 
hold,  with  Feuerbach,9  that  Religion  is  an  illusion 
in  which  we  project  as  it  were  a  shadowy  image  of  our- 
selves upon  the  background  of  a  world  in  which  there 
exists  as  a  matter  of  fact  no  higher  being  than  ourselves  ; 
but  that  this  is  the  natural  and  only  way  in  which  we 
can  discover  the  structure  of  our  own  souls  ;  since  a  direct 
vision  of  our  own  spiritual  nature  is  to  our  minds  as 
impossible  as  is  a  direct  vision  of  our  outward  form  to 
our  bodily  eyes  ;  so  that  only  by  means  of  a  shadow  or 
a  reflected  image  can  we  become  acquainted  with  either 
the  one  or  the  other. 

The  learned  author  of  the  History  of  European  Thought 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century, ^°  Dr.  Merz,  has  lately,  in  his  very 

9  In  his  book  Das  Wesen  der  Christenihums ,  which  George  Eliot 
translated  into  Enghsh.  >o  Edinburgh,  etc.,  1896-1914. 


THE   SUBJECT   PROPOSED  28 

interesting  essay  on  Religion  and  Science,^^  indicated  the 
problem  of  Personality  as  the  problem  to  the  consideration 
of  which  the  course  taken  by  the  discoveries  and  specula- 
tions of  the  last  age  particularly  invites  at  the  present 
time  the  attention  of  philosophers  ;  and  this  because, 
whether  we  are  exploring  the  nature  of  the  world  of 
objects  in  the  presence  of  which  we  stand  or  tracing  to 
its  origin  our  consciousness  of  that  world,  we  shall  meet 
at  last  confronting  us  in  our  path  this  mystery  of  Person- 
aUty.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  it  is  only  through  Personality 
— through  our  intercourse  with  persons  quickening  in 
us  a  personal  response — that  (to  quote  the  words  of  Dr. 
Merz  ")  we  gain  in  the  earliest  period  of  our  earthly  exist- 
ence that  entry  into  a  world  of  Reality  which  enables 
us  to  distinguish  our  self  from  a  not-self ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand  (to  cite  the  same  writer  again),  "  Personality  always 
impresses  us  as  the  most  powerful  instance  of  individual 
existence."  I  welcome  this  confirmation  by  so  high  an 
authority  of  conclusions  which  I  had  independently 
reached,  and  which  the  observations  that  follow  are 
intended  to  reinforce. 

Mr.  Rudyard  KipUng  in  the  Jungle  Book  has  made 
us  all  familiar  with  the  picture  of  a  human  child  stolen 
by  wolves  in  earliest  infancy,  brought  up  by  and  among 
animals  without  any  intercourse  with  other  human  beings, 
yet  arriving  in  due  course  at  intellectual  maturity  and 
the  exercise  of  reason.  What  little  evidence  there  is 
concerning  the  fate  of  children  thus  stolen  does  not, 
I  believe,  suggest  that  such  would  have  been  the  history 
of  a  real  Mowgli  ;  and  though  one  would  not  desire  unduly 
to  discourage  an  adventurous  imagination  bent  on  recon- 
structing the  past  history  of  our  species  and  the  genesis 

"  Edinburgh,  etc.,  1915.  '=  Religion  and  Science,   p.    174. 


24  GOD  AND  PERSONALITY 

of  Reason  upon  earth,  certainly  intercourse  with  other 
persons  seems  to  be  within  our  experience  an  indis- 
pensable condition  of  the  development  of  Rationality 
and  Personality  in  human  beings. '3 

I  think  that  Dr.  Merz  is  calling  attention  to  a  fact 
well  worthy  of  our  consideration  when  he  points  out  that 
knowledge  of  objects  always  begins  within  our  experience 
in  a  personal  environment,  and  that  it  is  probably  through 
personal  intercourse  that  we  come  to  that  discrimination 
of  our  selves  from  what  is  not  ourselves  which  is  involved 
in  knowledge.  Nevertheless,  even  if  we  content  ourselves 
with  saying  that  we  have  no  conception  of  knowledge 
except  as  a  personal  activity,  we  shall  still  be  admitting 
that  in  attempting  to  explore  the  nature  of  knowledge 
we  are  confronted  by  the  fact  of  personality  as  the  pre- 
supposition of  that  which  we  are  exploring.  So,  too,  we 
must  agree  with  Dr.  Merz  that  the  progress  of  knowledge 
itself  must  sooner  or  later  bring  us  face  to  face  with  this 
same  fact  of  Personality  as  the  highest  form  of  hfe,  and 
that,  as  students  of  living  nature  are  more  and  more 
coming  to  recognize  the  impossibihty  of  a  merely  mechan- 
ical or  chemical  account  of  life,  we  shall  be  no  less  com- 
pelled at  last  to  admit  that  the  study  of  Ufe  at  a  level 
below  that  of  Personality  will  not  suffice  to  solve  the 
problem  of  PersonaUty  itself. 

But  while  the  progress  of  thought  is  thus  forcing  upon 
our  attention  this  problem  of  Personality,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  both  the  scientific  and  the  philosophical 
speculation  of  the  last  age  showed  a  marked  tendency 
to  start  aside  (Uke  Balaam's  ass)  when  it  found  this 
mysterious  apparition  standing  in  the  way.     In  the  case 

'3  Cp.  Reid  On  the  Active  Powers,  Essay  V  c.  2  (ed.  Hamilton, 
ii.  p.  641). 


THE   SUBJECT   PROPOSED  25 

of  scientific  speculation  this  is  obvious,  and  is  readily 
to  be  accounted  for.  It  is  characteristic  of  Science 
(as  we  now  commonly  use  the  word)  to  concern  itself  with 
generalities  ;  and  it  is  precisely  preoccupation  with  the 
individual  that  marks  off  the  sphere  of  History  from  that 
of  Science.  No  doubt  the  data  of  Science  are  found  in 
the  observation  of  individuals  ;  but  the  moment  that  the 
observation  has  been  made,  if  it  is  to  be  turned  to  scientific 
account  at  all,  the  result  is,  so  to  say,  stripped  of  its  his- 
torical circumstances,  and  presented  as  true  not  of  that 
thing,  but  of  anything  of  that  kind.  Who  made  the 
observation,  and  upon  what  individual  object  it  was 
made,  these  are  questions  the  answers  to  which  are  only 
interesting  to  Science  so  far  as  the}''  guarantee  the  correct- 
ness of  the  observation  ;  and  that  once  assured,  they  may 
be  forgotten.  History  is  primarily  concerned  with  persons  ; 
Science,  on  the  other  hand,  can  treat  them  only  as  speci- 
mens, and  the  '  personal  equation  '  is  important  only  as  a 
source  of  error  to  be  discounted. 

The  embarrassment  of  Science  in  the  presence  of 
PersonaUty  is  thus  not  only  easily  explicable,  but  in  view 
of  its  special  task  legitimate.  More  remarkable  is  the 
embarrassment  of  the  very  philosophy  which  during  the 
past  century  has  made  it  its  business  to  repress  the  over- 
vaulting  ambitions  of  Natural  Science  and  to  insist  that 
a  method  which  necessarily  abstracts  from  the  spiritual 
factor  must  be  inadequate  to  the  complete  interpretation 
of  the  experience  of  a  spiritual  being.  Yet  it  is  hard  to 
deny  that  the  history  of  recent  thought  suggests  em- 
barrassment in  the  presence  of  Personality  on  the  part 
of  this  philosophy  as  well  as  on  the  part  of  Science.  The 
reasons  for  this  embarrassment  will  become  more  evident 
at  a  later  stage  of  this  inquiry.     I  will  at  present  confine 


26  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

myself  to  pointing  out  that,  like  the  embarrassment  of 
Science,  it  was  largely  due  to  the  task  which  this  phil- 
osophy had  set  itself,  especially  as  represented  by  its 
illustrious  progenitor,  Kant,  and  by  those  British 
thinkers  who  towards  the  end  of  the  last  century  devoted 
themselves  to  spreading  the  knowledge  of  Kant's  work 
and  of  developing  his  principles  among  the  inheritors  of 
the  tradition  of  the  great  British  empiricists,  Locke  and 
Hume. 

This  task  may  be  said  to  have  been  that  of  combating 
the  scepticism  of  Hume  by  insistence  on  the  principles 
of  construction  or  synthesis  which,  though  neglected  or 
misrepresented  by  the  empiricists,  are  really  involved  in 
the  process  of  the  scientific  understanding.  The  tradi- 
tional alliance  between  Natural  Science  and  the  empirical 
philosophy  had  caused  the  real  inconsistency  between 
them  to  be  overlooked.  Yet  Natural  Science  implied 
the  existence  of  objects  which,  though  they  could  be  felt, 
could  not  really  be  reduced  to  a  combination  of  feelings. 
Hence,  it  was  contended,  the  mind  which  was  capable 
of  Natural  Science  must  be  more  than  the  mere  aggregate 
of  sensations  to  which  Hume  had  shown  it  must  be  reduced 
if  one  were  to  be  faithful  to  the  implication  of  Locke's 
theory  of  knowledge  ;  a  theory  which  still,  a  century  later, 
was  in  essentials  that  in  vogue  among  British  men  of 
science. M  The  mind  must  possess  in  itself — independently 
of  any  experience  by  way  of  separate  sensations — those 
principles  of  synthesis  and  construction,  to  which  Kant 
had  given  the  name  of  categories.  But  Natural  Science, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  takes  no  account  of  Personality 

M  Professor  Gibson  has  well  pointed  out  in  his  recent  book  on 
Locke's  Theory  of  Knowledge  that  Locke  was  himself  much  less  of 
an  empiricist  than  he  appears  in  Green's  criticism  of  him,  which 
I  was  following  in  the  text. 


THE   SUBJECT   PROPOSED  27 

except  as  a  possible  source  of  errors  in  observation  ;  the 
principles  of  synthesis  and  construction  which  it  employs 
are  those  which  abstract  from  the  difference  of  individual 
minds  from  one  another.  Hence  a  philosophy  mainly 
concerned  with  the  criticism  of  the  procedure  of  Natural 
Science  will  concentrate  its  attention  upon  the  principles 
of  construction  and  synthesis  of  which  Natural  Science 
makes  use  rather  than  upon  o.ie  which  it  can  only  recognize 
as  a  disturbing  factor  whose  influence  must  be  discounted 
before  any  trustworthy  results  can  be  attained. 

But  if,  in  tracing  the  recent  history  of  thought,  one 
is  thus  struck  by  a  certain  failure  on  the  part  of  at  least 
two  representative  groups  of  thinkers  to  come  to  grips 
with  the  problem  of  Personality,  we  shall  not  be  sur- 
prised to  find  also  that  this  very  failure  has  provoked  a 
marked  tendency  in  other  quarters  to  place  this  problem 
in  the  forefront  of  philosophical  debate.  No  represen- 
tative of  this  tendency,  however,  appears  to  me  to  have 
so  dealt  with  the  problem  as  to  render  superfluous  or 
belated  a  further  attempt  to  contribute  to  its  discussion  ; 
though  I  cannot  hope  that  that  which  I  have  to  offer 
will  do  more  than,  at  the  utmost,  indicate  some  diffi- 
culties or  suggest  some  considerations  which  have  not 
always  been  borne  in  mind  by  others  who  have  turned 
their  thoughts  in  the  same  direction. 

It  is  a  profound  saying  of  Tertulhan's  :  Hahet  Deus 
testimonia  totum  hoc  quod  suntus  et  in  quo  sumus.^S  Nothing 
in  ourselves,  nothing  in  our  environment  can  be  utterly 
irrelevant  to  the  subject  presented  to  these  Lectures 
by  their  Founder,  the  subject  of  Natural  Theology.  And 
so  I  need,  I  think,  make  no  apology  if  I  advert  to 
the  special  circumstances  in  which  these   Lectures   were 

>5  Adv.  Marc.  i.   lo. 

C 


28  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

delivered  and  suggest  that  they  also  invite  our  attention 
to  the  particular  topic  which  I  had  chosen  for  my  theme. 

The  great  and  terrible  war  in  which  at  the  time  of  the 
delivery  of  these  Lectures  our  country  had  been  engaged 
for  nearly  four  years  has,  I  think,  modified  very  greatly 
the  attitude  of  thoughtful  men,  not  especially  occupied 
^^ith  the  study  of  philosophy,  but  inquisitive  concerning 
the  great  questions  which  Ufe  propounds  to  us  all,  towards 
the  problem  of  Peisonality  in  God  and  in  men.  The  time 
that  preceded  the  war  was  a  time  in  which  even  intelligent 
people  could  seriously  doubt  whether  there  would  ever 
be  another  armed  conflict  on  a  great  scale  between  civilized 
Powers  ;  a  time  in  which  the  whole  story  of  war  which 
has  filled  so  much  of  human  history,  with  all  its  suffering 
and  all  its  heroism,  all  its  brutality  and  all  its  sacrifice, 
had  become  to  many  educated  men  among  ourselves 
something  legendary,  a  tale  of 

.  .   .  old,  unhappy,  far-oflE  things 
And  battles  long  ago.  "^ 

In  such  a  time  a  certain  way  of  regarding  Personality 
had  become  familiar,  which  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
the  war  has  for  a  great  number  of  persons  completely 
reversed,  making  it  seem  important  where  it  had  seemed 
insignificant,  and  insignificant  where  it  had  seemed  im- 
portant. On  the  one  hand  the  progress  of  scientific 
discovery,  opening  up  to  the  imagination  new  and  over- 
whelmingly vast  vistas  of  Time  and  Space  ;  the  rapid 
fading  of  beliefs  which  appeared  to  be  bound  up  with 
the  discarded  cosmology  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  seemed  to 
appeal  to  the  trustworthiness  of  traditions  the  authority 
of  which  had  been  irremediably  shattered  by  the  advance 
'fi  Wordsworth,    The   Solitary  Reaper, 


THE   SUBJECT   PROPOSED  29 

of  historical  knowledge  and  criticism  ;  and  lastlj?^  the 
gradual  loosening  of  ties  which  had  largely  depended  for 
their  sanctity  and  binding  force  upon  the  validity  of  these 
same  beliefs  :  all  these  things  had  for  multitudes  of  our 
contemporaries  dwarfed  into  insignificance  the  ephemeral 
life  of  the  human  individual  upon  this  planet  and  obliter- 
ated his  once  '  sure  and  certain  hope  '  of  another  life 
when  that  was  over.  On  the  other  hand,  the  same  changes 
of  outlook  had  made  that  very  ephemeral  life  seem  to  him 
who  had  to  live  it  his  one  chance  of  happiness,  of  which 
he  would  do  "wisely  to  make  the  very  fullest  use  in  the  few 
years  allotted  him.  The  realization  of  individual  per- 
sonality had  come  to  seem  at  once  supremely  important 
as  an  object  of  human  endeavour,  and  supremely  unim- 
portant from  the  point  of  view  of  the  universe,  wherein 
humanity  itself  was  no  more  than  the  "  child  of  a  thousand 
chances  'neath  the  indifferent  sky."  ^7 

Now  for  many  the  war  has  reversed  all  this.  Men 
who  were  believed  by  others — who  may  even  have  believed 
themselves — to  have  asked  from  Ufe  no  more  than  the 
largest  possible  measure  of  happiness  for  their  individual 
selves,  by  whom  the  assertion  that  country  and  State 
were  sacred  realities  which  could  claim  from  them  a 
real  devotion  or  self-sacrifice  was  felt  to  have  about  it 
something  romantic  or  theatrical — an  echo  of  picturesque 
but  absurd  times  '  when  knights  were  bold  ' — such  men 
have  not  hesitated,  nay,  more,  have  after  hesitation 
deliberately  resolved  to  risk  everything  they  could  call 
their  own — comfort,  prospects,  happiness,  life — as  of  no 
account  when  set  in  the  balance  against  their  country's 
call.  Death  has  become  a  famihar  acquaintane  to  us 
all ;  if  we  are  to  hold  up  our  heads  at  all,  we  cannot  afford 
'7  Sir  W.  Watson,  The  Hope  of  the  World.  §  7. 


80  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

to  rate  so  high  as  we  did  the  earthly  Ufe  which  death 
cuts  short,  and  the  opportunity  of  happiness  which  it 
holds  for  the  individual.  But  this  very  depreciation  of 
the  value  to  the  individual  of  that  separate  personality, 
to  give  which  what  seemed  its  solitary  chance  of  full 
development  had  been  reckoned  the  one  thing  worth 
caring  about,  has  revived  in  the  hearts  of  mourners 
who  have  lost  those  in  whom  their  own  hopes  were  bound 
up  the  old  reluctance  to  believe  that  this  life  is  all,  the 
old  faith  that  Personality  has  a  greater  significance  in 
the  universal  scheme  than  accords  with  the  suggestions 
of  physical  science  ;  it  has  revived  also  both  in  those 
who  are  fighting  and  those  whom  they  have  left  at  home 
the  old  instinct  of  prayer  and  therewith  the  demand 
even  in  unexpected  quarters,  for  one  who  can  "  hear  the 
prayer  "  ^^,  for  what  we  are  apt  to  call  a  personal  God. 

No  doubt  it  is  possible  to  say  that  all  this  ought  to  make 
no  difference  to  a  philosophic  '  spectator  of  all  time  and 
all  existence.'  Even  this  great  war,  what  is  it  in  the 
immensity  of  the  stellar  universe  but  a  very  little  thing, 
"  a  trouble  of  ants  in  the  gleam  of  a  million  million  of 
suns  "  ?  ^9  It  before  it  began  there  was  no  proof  of  the 
existence  of  a  personal  God  who  can  hear  our  prayers, 
no  reasonable  probability  that  consciousness  survives 
bodily  death,  the  intensity  of  our  private  sorrows  and  the 
recrudescence  of  ancient  habits  cannot  alter  the  laws  of 
evidence.  But  I  am  not  now  concerned  to  defend  the 
change  of  attitude  towards  the  problem  of  PersonaUty 
of  which  the  war  has  been  the  occasion  ;  only  to  note  it 
as  an  additional  reason  for  attempting  at  this  time  to 
make  up  our  minds  what  we  ought  to  think  about  that 
problem  itself. 

>8  Psa.  Ixv.  2.  *9  Tennyson,   Vastness. 


THE   SUBJECT  PROPOSED  81 

In  tracing  this  history  we  shall,  as  I  have  already 
intimated,  find  ourselves  compelled  to  take  note  of  the 
discussions  of  Christian  theologians  respecting  two  points 
of  central  importance  in  Christian  theology,  the  union 
of  the  divine  and  human  natures  in  the  person  of  Christ, 
and  the  coexistence  of  three  persons  in  the  nature  of 
God.  It  was  the  desire  of  Lord  Gifford  that  the  subject 
of  Natural  Theology  should  be  treated  by  the  Lectiures 
on  his  Foundation  without  reference  to  or  rehance  upon 
any  supposed  special  exceptional  or  so-called  miraculous 
revelation.  That  I  shall  not  be  in  any  way  contravening 
the  spirit  of  this  provision  in  the  will  of  the  Founder 
by  giving  a  historical  survey  of  views  in  support  of 
which  their  propounders  would  certainly  have  invoked 
the  authority  of  a  special  revelation,  with  the  intention 
of  showing  the  influence  exerted  by  these  views  on  the 
usage  of  the  terms  Person  and  PersonaUty — this  would 
be,  I  imagine,  readily  admitted.  But  I  do  not  think 
that  I  shall  be  unfaithful  to  Lord  Gifford's  wishes,  wishes 
to  which  moreover  he  was  with  great  wisdom  careful 
not  to  bind  his  beneficiaries  too  strictly,  only  intending, 
as  he  says,  "  to  indicate  leading  principles,"  if  I  take 
seriously,  as  possible  materials  for  the  view  of  Personality 
that  I  desire  to  recommend  to  you,  conceptions  suggested 
by  theological  doctrines  which  will  come  before  us  in 
the  course  of  our  historical  survey.  So  long  as  they  are 
not  treated  as  authoritative  or  as  sacrosanct  and  imnmne 
from  ciiticism,  there  can  be  no  more  inconsistency  with 
a  free  scientific  treatment  of  our  subject  in  such  a  use  of 
them,  despite  the  belief  of  those  who  first  put  them  for- 
ward in  their  pecuUar  claim  to  be  considered  as  revealed, 
than  there  is  in  a  like  use  of  the  doctrines  of  any  phil- 
osopher, which  we    may  find    useful   in  guiding  us  to  a 


82  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

conclusion  of  our  own  ;  and  we  may  be  very  sure  that 
Lord  Gifford  had  no  thought  of  requiring  of  his  Lecturers 
an  impossible  independence  of  all  previous  speculation. 
I  shall,  therefore,  not  hesitate  to  seek  in  the  conceptions 
suggested  by  the  dogmas  of  the  Christian  Church  the 
same  kind  of  help  as  I  should  seek  in  those  implied  in  the 
systems  of  the  masters  of  philosophy  :  and  shall  feel 
my  conscience  in  doing  so  quite  free  from  any  scruple 
arising  from  Lord  Gifford's  desire  that  his  Lecturers  should 
treat  their  subject  "  without  reference  to  or  reliance  on 
any  supposed  special,  exceptional,  or  so-called  miraculous 
revelation."  At  the  same  time  I  must  confess  that  my 
view  of  the  relation  of  Natural  Theology  to  the  historical 
religions  is  probably  not  quite  the  same  as  that  which 
was  taken  by  the  Founder  of  these  Lectures.  I  have 
elsewhere  20  given  my  reasons  for  holding  that  Natural 
Theology  is  to  be  regarded  not  after  the  manner  suggested 
by  certain  expressions  in  Lord  Gifford's  will,  as  a  science 
consisting  of  truths  reached  altogether  independently 
of  a  historical  religion,  but  rather  as  the  result  of  reflection 
on  a  religious  experience  mediated  in  every  case  through 
a  historical  religion.  Hence  I  do  not  think  it  possible 
for  our  subject  to  be  (in  Lord  Gifford's  words)  "  considered 
just  as  astronomy  or  chemistry  is,"  and  that  because 
it  cannot,  in  my  judgment,  be  rightly  described,  as  Lord 
Gifford  seems  to  have  thought  that  it  could  be  described, 
"  as  a  strictly  natural  science."  But  I  should  not  regard 
the  difference  between  Natural  Theology  and  the  '  strictly 
natural '  sciences,  such  as  astronomy  or  chemistry,  as 
consisting  in  the  fact  that  in  the  former  our  thought  is 
not  to  be  allowed  free  play  as  m  the  latter,  but  must  be 
exercised  within  the  limits  imposed  by  authority,  or  by 
»•  Studies  in  the  History  of  Natural  Theology,  p   271. 


THE   SUBJECT   PROPOSED  88 

assumptions  which  are  not  open  at  any  time  to  recon- 
sideration and  criticism.  I  should  rather  regard  it  as 
depending  on  a  characteristic  shared  by  Natural  Theology 
with  such  other  subjects  as  Moral  Philosophy,  Political 
Philosophy,  and  the  Philosophy  of  Art.  Wherever  there 
is  found  any  one  of  the  kinds  of  reflection  which  we  describe 
by  these  names,  it  cannot  but  originate  in  the  special 
moral,  political,  or  aesthetic  experience  of  a  particular 
people  ;  although,  at  the  same  time,  the  claim  made  for 
such  reflection  to  be  a  branch  of  Philosophy  implies  the 
faith  that  every  experience  of  the  sort  can  ultimately 
be  placed  in  an  intelligible  relation  with  every  other  and 
be  shown  to  have  its  function  as  a  member  of  the  resultant 
system. 

So  too  I  should  hold  that  a  definite  type  of  religious 
experience,  expressed  in  a  historical  religion,  is  pre- 
supposed in  every  system  of  Natural  Theology  ;  while 
the  ultimate  goal  of  all  human  speculation  which  can  be 
so  named  must  be  a  system  which  presupposes  all  the 
religious  experience  of  mankind  ;  an  experience  to  which 
indeed  those  who  regard  Rehgion  as  genuine  experience, 
and  not  as  mere  illusion  throughout,  cannot  surely  deny 
the  name  of  Revelation. 

From  the  history  of  the  notion  of  Personality  and  of 
the  application  of  it  to  God  I  shall  pass  to  a  consideration 
of  the  motives  which  have  led  to  an  attempt  to  find 
Personality  in  God,  and  of  the  difficulties  which  such 
an  attempt  encounters.  We  shall  find  ourselves  in  the 
course  of  this  investigation  examining  the  conceptions 
implied  in  such  phrases  as  '  divine  immanence,'  '  divine 
transcendence,'  and  '  a  finite  God.'  Lastly  I  shall 
venture  to  put  before  you  certain  conclusions  to  which 
I  have  been  led  by  my  reflections  on  these  motives  for 


34  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

seeking  Personality  in  God  and  on  the  difficulties  involved 
in  such  a  search. 

This  programme  will  bring  us  to  the  end  of  the  present 
course.  The  following  course  I  propose  to  devote  to  an 
inquiry  into  the  bearing  of  my  conclusions,  reached  in 
the  former  course,  as  to  PersonaUty  in  God  upon  the 
view  which  we  should  take  of  Personality  in  men,  as 
exhibited  in  the  various  spheres  of  human  activity — in 
conduct,  in  politics,  in  art,  in  science,  in  religion  ;  and 
also  upon  what,  borrowing  an  expression  from  the  title 
of  Mr.  Bosanquet's  Gifford  Lectures,  to  which  I  have 
already  referred,  I  will  call  the  question  of  the  '  value 
and  destiny  of  the  individual '  person. 

My  next  Lecture  will  deal  with  the  history  of  the  word 
Person  and  with  the  notion  of  Personality  in  general. 


LECTURE   II 

HISTORY    OF    THE    NOTION    OF   PERSONALITY 
IN  GENERAL 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  in  its  original  use  the  word 
persona  was  the  designation  of  the  mask  worn  by  the 
actor  on  the  ancient  Roman  stage  and  came  to  be  used 
of  the  actor  himself  and  his  part  in  the  play  ;  and  hence 
of  the  part  that  a  man  plays  in  social  intercourse  generally, 
and  especially  those  forms  of  social  intercourse  in  which, 
as  in  legal  transactions  or  in  the  official  relations  of  public 
magistrates,  a  definite  task  is  assigned,  just  as  in  a  play, 
to  a  particular  man,  to  which  all  that  he  is  or  does  when 
not  engaged  in  the  performance  of  that  task  is  irrelevant. 
In  classical  Latin  persona  did  not  acquire  that  vague 
use  as  equivalent  to  '  human  being  '  generally  in  which 
'  person  '  is  among  ourselves  so  often  employed.  It  is 
possible  no  doubt  to  quote  one  or  two  passages  even  in 
classical  Latin  which  may  seem  to  contradict  this  state- 
ment. ^  But  even  in  these  I  think  we  should  be  more 
nearly  correct  in  translating  persona  by  '  party  '  than 
in  translating  it  by  '  person.'  The  word  '  party,'  even 
when  it  was,  as  in  old  English  (to  use  the  expression  of 
the  Neii)  English  Dictionary),  "  common  and  in  serious 
use  "  for  an  individual  person,  had  not  wholly  lost  the 

'  E.g.  Suet.  Ner.  §  i  ;    Juv.  Sat.  iv.  15. 
35 


36  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

meaning  belonging  to  it  in  the  legal  or  mercantile  phrase- 
ology from  which  it  was  borrowed.  It  meant  the  man 
or  woman  concerned  in  the  transaction  of  which  mention 
was  being  made.  When  a  reference  of  this  sort  to  a  part 
played  by  the  person  in  question  in  a  definite  affair  involving 
other  parties  is  wholly  absent,  as  when  one  speaks  of  '  an 
old  party  '  or  '  a  stout  party,'  the  expression  is,  except 
as  jocular,  not  recognized  in  educated  English  ;  and  it 
is  probably  due  to  its  undignified  associations,  as  vulgarly 
employed  in  such  colloquialisms,  that  the  use  of  the 
word  for  an  individual  person  in  solemn  and  sacred 
contexts,  such  as  those  in  which  the  English  divines  of 
the  seventeenth  century  were  not  afraid  to  avail  them- 
selves of  it,  has  now  become  impossible. 

If  in  classical  Latin  persona  did  not,  on  the  one  hand, 
acquire  the  vague  colourless  sense  which  person  has  among 
ourselves  when  we  use  it  to  mean  no  more  than  '  indi- 
vidual human  being,'  neither  did  it,  on  the  other,  come 
to  be  expressive  of  what  may  be  supposed  to  distinguish 
the  inner  Hfe  of  a  human  being  from  that  of  an  animal — 
self-consciousness,  moral  purpose,  aesthetic  emotion, 
intellectual  point  of  view.  The  possibiUty  of  such  a 
use  of  it — the  philosophical  use  of  it,  as  we  may  call 
it — which  we  assume  in  such  a  discussion  of  Personality 
as  I  am  undertaking  in  these  Lectures,  lay  no  doubt  in  this, 
that  persona  always  implied  that  the  being  so  designated 
had  a  part  to  play  in  some  kind  of  social  intercourse,  such 
as  is  represented  in  a  drama  ;  and  that  of  such  social 
intercourse  no  mere  animal  but  only  a  human  being  is 
capable.  But  the  appropriation  of  the  word  to  express 
the  dignity  of  the  rational  human  being  in  his  consciousness 
of  a  special  function  and  worth  in  relation  to  his  fellow- 
men  would,  though  assisted  by  the  juristic  associations 


PERSONALITY  IN   GENERAL  87 

of  the  term,  probably  not  have  taken  root  in  the  modern 
languages  of  Europe  had  persona  not  come  to  be  used  by 
the  Latin-speaking  theologians  of  the  Christian  Church 
as  the  equivalent  of  the  Greek  vTroo-rao-tc. 

This  word  vTroaraaiq,  which  literally  means  '  a  standing 
under  or  below,'  was  in  classical  Greek  used  only  of  that 
which  has  settled  down  at  the  bottom — dregs,  that  is, 
or  sediment ;  or  else  of  the  position  of  one  who  hes  in 
ambush,  standing  concealed  under  some  kind  of  cover. 
But  it  came  at  a  later  period  to  signify  what  we  may  call 
real  concrete  existence  as  opposed  to  a  mere  appearance 
with  nothing  solid  or  permanent  underlying  it.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was  among  the  Stoics  that  ttiis 
usage  arose  ;  but  actual  examples  of  its  use  by  writers 
of  this  School  are  lacking.  The  corresponding  verb, 
however,  occurs  in  the  great  Stoic  moralist  Chrysippus 
in  a  related  sense  * ;  and  the  word  itself  is  employed  in 
the  pseudo-Aristotelian  treatise  de  Mundo,  which  was 
most  likely  written  in  the  first  century  of  our  era,  and 
in  a  passage  of  it  which  probably  repeats  the  views  of 
the  Stoic  Posidonius,  the  master  of  Cicero,  to  express 
the  corporeal  reality  which  comets,  for  example,  have, 
and  mere  effects  of  light,  such  as  rainbows,  have  not. 3 
About  the  same  time  the  appearance  in  the  letters  of 
Seneca  of  the  Latin  substantia,  which  must  have  origi- 
nated as  a  translation  of  viroaraaiq,  to  express  real  con- 
crete existence,  testifies  to  the  acquisition  by  the  Greek 
word  of  this  signification  in  the  preceding  generation 
at  latest ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  ecclesiastical 

»  Plutarch,  Moralia,  1081  F:  XpvtrnnroQ  .  .  .  ro  fitv  -jzapuyri^tvov 
Tov  yjpovov  Kai  tu  yufXXov  ovy^  VTrap^etv  ctXX'  v<pe/TTT)Kii'ai  ((>T]ai.  It  is 
noticeable,  in  view  of  the  later  history  of  the  word  viroerTamc,  that 
it  is  not  the  actual  present  for  which  viltiarnKtrai  is  here  reserved. 

'  4-395.  21  3°-  See  Zeller.  Phil,  der  Griechen,  3rd  ed.  III.  i  p.  644  f. 


88  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

historian  Socrates  has  preserved  for  us  the  record  of  a 
protest  made  against  its  use  in  this  sense  as  a  barbarous 
novelty  by  an  Alexandrian  scholar  who  may  have  lived 
as  early  as  the  time  of  Augustus. 4 

Neither  Seneca  nor  Quintilian,  who  in  the  next  generation 
often  uses  substantia  in  the  way  to  which  I  have  referred, 
regards  it  as  corresponding  to  the  Greek  oixrto*  which 
signifies  being  in  the  widest  sense. 5  But  the  latter  employs 
it  in  connexions  where  ovaia  might  have  been  used  in 
Greek  ^  ;  and  it  came  afterwards  to  be  the  usual  rendering 
of  that  word,  for  which  both  the  two  Roman  writers 
just  mentioned  lamented  the  absence  of  a  proper  Latin 
equivalent  in  common  use. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  word  essentia,  which  might 
have  seemed  to  be  the  natural  representative  for  oifaia 
in  Latin,  although  it  could  claim  the  great  authority  of 
Cicero,  and  although  other  distinguished  writers,  Seneca 
among  them,  attempted  to  introduce  it  in  this  capacity, 
failed  to  establish  itself  until  some  centuries  later,  and  left 
the  place  in  philosophical  terminology  which  its  patrons 
intended  for  it,  to  be  filled    by  substantia.!      That    sub- 

4  See  Socr.  Hist.  Ecc.  in.  y.  The  scholar  in  question  was  the 
grammarian  Irenaeus,  otherwise  called  Minucius  Pacatus.  His 
date,  however,  is  not  certain,  and  he  has  by  some  been  placed  as 
late  as  the  reign  of  Hadrian. 

5  See  Seneca,  Ep.  58  §  6.     Quintilian,  Inst.  Or.  iii.  6  §  23. 

6  See  Inst.  Or.  ii.  15  §  34,  iii.  6  §  39,  ix.  i  §  8.  We  know  from 
Pseudo-Augustine  Princ.  Rhet.  c.  5  that  de  substantia  in  the  last 
of  these  passages,  as  the  description  of  a  subject  of  legal  investi- 
gation, corresponds  to  nepi  Trjq  ovniac  in  the  terminology  of  the 
rhetorician  Theodorus  of  Gadara,  who  flourished  in  the  reign  of 
Augustus. 

7  See  Seneca,  Ep.  58  §  6 ;  Quintilian,  Inst.  Or.  iii.  6  §  23,  viii.  3  §  33  ; 
Sidonius  ApoUinaris  proef.  ad.  carm.  14  ;  Quintilian  (ii.  14  §  2,  iii. 
6  §  23)  says  that  Plautus  used  essentia,  but,  if  he  did  so,  it  is  not 
likely  to  have  been  in  a  philosophical  context.  Augustine  {de 
Moribus  Manichdis  ii.  2  §  2,  tie  Trin.  v.  §  9)  still  speaks,  in  the  fifth 


PERSONALITY   IN   GENERAL  89 

siantia  could  fill  this  place  implies  a  close  approximation 
in  meaning  between  virocrTamg  and  oitcria,  making  a 
discrimination  between  them  a  task  of  some  difficulty. 

The  first  unquestionable  extant  example  of  the  use  of 
vTrdtTTumg  itself  in  a  sense  hardly  distinguishable  from 
that  of  ova'ia  is  in  the  anonymous  work  of  an  author 
who  was  probably  younger  than  Seneca  and  older  than 
QuintiUan,  and  who  belonged,  not  to  the  cultivated 
society  of  the  capital,  but  to  a  people  which  more  than 
any  other  within  the  Empire  resolutely  held  itself  aloof 
in  religious  isolation  from  the  main  stream  of  contem- 
porary life.  This  work  is  that  which  we  call  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews. 

At  the  very  outset  of  this  Epistle  the  Son  of  God  is 
described  as  the  xapaicTTip  rng  vnoaraanoq,  the  "  express 
image  of  the  substance"  of  his  Father. *  Our  Authorized 
Version  of  the  Bible,  influenced  by  the  technicaUties  of 
the  later  theology,  has  person  in  this  passage  ;  but  the 
Revised  Version  has  replaced  this  word  by  substance. 
We  also  find  the  word  in  another  work  of  the  same 
age,  also  by  a  Jewish  writer,  the  so-called  Wisdom  of 
Solomon  9  ;  the  interpretation  of  it  in  this  place  is  doubtful, 
but,  in  the  judgment  of  the  Revisers  of  1894,  it  refers, 
as  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  to  the  nature  or  being 
of  God.  Another  Hellenistic  Jew,  the  Alexandrian 
philosopher,  Philo,  certainly  employs  the  cognate  verb 
with  this  reference.  ^0  We  may  also  note  that  the  word 
in  the  sense  of  subsistence  or  continuance — a  sense  which 
would  easily  pass  into  the  sense  of  nature  or  essence — is 

century,  of  essentia  as  an  unfamiliar  word,  and  describes  substantia 
as   the  recognized   Latin   rendering  of  ohtria. 

8  Heb.  i.  3.  9  xvi.   21. 

'o  Quod  deterius  potiori  insidiari  soleat,  §  160  (ed.  Cohn  i,  p.  294). 


40  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

already  found  in  the  LXX  version  of  the  Psalms,"  as  well 
as  in  less  closely  related  senses  in  that  of  the  Prophets." 
There  is  nothing  but  what  is  natural  in  a  term  which 
would  thus  be  familiar  to  readers  of  the  Greek  Old  Testa- 
ment domesticating  itself  in  the  language  of  the  Christian 
Church  ;  and  it  was,  as  has  already  been  observed,  due 
to  its  employment  in  Christian  theology  that  it  came  to 
be  rendered  by,  and  so  to  affect  the  usage  of,  the  Latin 
persona. 

To  make  this  episode  in  the  caieer  of  the  word  wTrooraatc 
fully  intelligible  it  will  be  necessary  to  look  back  for  a 
few  minutes  to  an  earlier  period  in  the  history  of  Greek 
philosophical  terminology  and  consider  those  difficulties 
in  determining  the  proper  use  of  the  word  ovaia,  being 
or  reality,  with  which  Aristotle's  discussion  of  its  ambigui- 
ties makes  us  acquainted. ^3  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this 
word  might  naturally  enough  be  applied  to  the  charac- 
teristic nature  of  a  thing,  by  a  description  of  which  we 
should  answer  the  question  '  What  is  it  ? '  But  as,  if 
this  question  were  raised  about  several  things  of  the 
same  kind,  we  might  give  exactly  the  same  answer  in 
the  case  of  each,  the  being  or  essence,  as  we  may  say, 
of  a  thing  might  seem  to  be  something  common  to  it 
with  others,  or,  in  the  language  of  the  logicians,  a  '  uni- 
versal.' On  the  other  hand,  it  was  argued  by  Aristotle 
that  nothing  could  be  properly  considered  as  an  ovaia, 
or  real  being,  which  was  not  something  existing,  so  to  say> 
upon  its  own  account,  something  to  which  attributes 
might  belong,  but  which  could  not  belong  in  this  way  to 
anything  else  ;    which  was,  in  the  phrase  which  had  come 

"  Psa.  xxxviii.  (xxxix.)  6  ;    Ixxxviii.  (Ixxxix.)  48. 
'=  Jer.    X.    17    (t-z/j'   v.    (tov  — thy   substance,    i.e.   thy  property)  , 
Ezek.  xxvi.  11  {t7h'  b.  n'/g  'lax^og  ffoi/ =  the  support  of  thy  strength). 
'3  Metaph.  Z.  1-3,  cp.  A  8. 


PERSONALITY  IN   GENERAL  41 

to  be  appropriated  to  such  a  thing,  a  viroKuntvov,  a 
subject  or  substratum.  Hence  a  mere  '  universal '  such 
as  '  man,'  which  is  no  more  what  I  am  than  it  is  what 
you  are  or  what  you  are  than  \vhat  I  am,  could  not  be 
rightly  called  ovata,  but  only  an  individual  being,  this 
or  that  individual  man,  for  example  Socrates  or  Calhas,  in 
whom  are  met  together  the  two  mutually  complementary 
conditions  of  full  reality,  namely  a  distinguishable  nature 
of  its  own  and  that  concrete  independence  which  cannot 
be  ascribed  to  what  is  only  an  accident  or  attribute 
of  something  else.  But  the  term  vwoKeifxevov ,  which  is 
used  to  indicate  this  latter  note  of  a  real  being,  could  be 
and  was  employed  also  as  a  designation  of  that  abstraction 
of  indeterminate,  unquahfied  potentiality  which  Aristotle 
called  uXrj  or  Matter.  Greek  philosophy  was  haunted, 
as  it  were,  by  the  thought  of  this  Matter,  lying  at  the  root 
of  whatever  is  susceptible  of  any  kind  of  development  ; 
in  itself  without  form  or  character  of  any  kind,  but  capable 
of  receiving  any  and  so  becoming  some  particular  thing, 
quahfied  in  some  definite  way.  Matter,  thus  understood, 
might  be  called  the  ultimate  v7roK£i/j.tvov  or  substratum 
of  everything  in  this  lower  world.  Now  it  was,  I  take 
it,  because  this  word  inroKiifxtvov  might  be  thus  used, 
and  so  could  not  be  restricted  to  the  concrete  individual 
thing,  in  which  some  form  or  nature,  describable  in  general 
terms  which  are  applicable  to  more  things  than  one,  is 
reahzed  in  this  or  that  instance,  this  or  that  man,  this  or 
that  horse,  that  there  was  felt  in  the  post -Aristotelian 
period  of  Greek  philosophy  to  be  room  for  a  word  appro- 
priated to  this  last  signification  only.  Such  a  word  was 
found  in  vTroaTamg,  a  word  involving  practically  the  same 
metaphor  as  ifTroKiifuvov,  but  without  the  associations  of 
vnoKtifibvuv    with    mere    indeterminate    Matter.      Ihus   it 


42  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

is  that  vnotTTamg  comes  into  use  as  a  philosophical  term, 
often  equivalent  to  ovaia,  which  for  Aristotle  is  most 
properly  used  of  the  concrete  individual  of  a  certain  kind ; 
but  of  Aristotle's  two  notes  of  real  being,  its  intelligible 
character  and  its  concrete  independence,  emphasizing  the 
latter,  as  ovala  emphasized  the  former. 

This  ditference  of  emphasis  between  the  two  words 
ovaia  and  vTToaTuaiq  Sufficiently  accounts  for  the  use 
made  of  them  respectively  by  the  Christian  Church  in 
the  eventual  formulation  of  her  theology.  When  con- 
strained to  give  systematic  expression  to  the  implications 
of  the  divine  Name  of  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  the  use 
of  which  had  been  characteristic  of  Christianity  at  least 
from  the  time  of  its  first  appearance  on  the  stage  of  the 
Graeco-Roman  world  as  a  claimant  to  universal  allegiance, 
she  worked  out  a  terminology  in  which  oxxr'ia  was  appro- 
priated to  the  one  Divine  Nature,  viroaraaiq  to  the  dis- 
tinctions within  it  designated  by  the  three  titles.  Father, 
Son,  and  Spirit. 

As  is  well  known  to  students  of  theology,  the  settle- 
ment of  this  terminology  was  a  long  and  controversial 
process.  The  discrimination  of  ovaia  from  vwocfTaaig 
was  not  readily  accepted  ;  for,  whatever  difference  of 
emphasis  there  may  have  been  between  the  two  words, 
they  were  at  first,  both  inside  and  outside  of  the  Christian 
Church,  generally  consideied  on  the  whole  as  synonymous. 
They  were  so  both  in  the  language  of  Origen,  in  whose 
writings  the  description  of  the  members  of  the  Trinity 
as  three  vTroaTuatiQ  first  occurs,  and  also  in  that  of 
his  fellow-student  at  Alexandria,  Plotinus.  We  should, 
indeed,  expect  the  associations  of  the  word  to  be  the  same 
for  them  both.  The  use  of  viruaTaaiQ  by  Plotinus  and 
by  the   Neo-Platonic  philosophers  generally  is  a  subject 


PERSONALITY   IN   GENERAL  48 

which  needs  a  fuller  investigation  than  it  seems  yet  to 
have  received.  For  Plotinus,  so  far  as  I  understand  him — 
but  he  is  a  very  difficult  author  and  I  make  no  claim  to 
more  than  a  superficial  acquaintance  with  his  writings — 
vTToaraaig  and  the  corresponding  verb  seem  to  signify 
the  concrete  actuality  of  that  to  which  they  are  appHed. 
Such  a  concrete  actuality  does  Origen  attribute  to  each 
member  of  the  Christian  Trinity  where  he  speaks  of  them 
as  three  uTrotrrao-etc  M  ;  and  Plotinus  to  each  member  of 
his  corresponding  triad — the  Supreme  Good,  Intelligence, 
and  the  World  Soul ;  which,  in  the  title  of  one  of  the  essays 
by  him  which  his  disciple  Porphyry  collected  into  the 
fifth  Ennead,^5  are  described  as  the  three  a/ax'f"' 
vtroaraauq,    piimary  or  original  realities. 

The  word  ovaia,  on  the  other  hand,  though,  as  we  have 
seen,  generally  regarded  as  synonymous  with  viroaraaiq — 
and  so  treated  not  only  by  Plotinus  but  by  Origen — was 
obviously  more  readily  appUcable  to  something  which 
was  shared  by  several  concrete  actualities,  but  was  itself 
not  actual  apart  from  or  outside  of  them.  Hence,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  the  final  settlement  of  the  terminology  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  the  divine  ovaia 
was  said  to  be  one,  the  divine  vTroarrcKTeig  three.  This 
terminology  was  so  far,  however,  not  distinguishable 
from  that  which  might  be  used  in  discriminating  the 
one  identical  human  nature  of  Peter,  James,  and  John 
from  the  individuality  in  which  the  three  men  differ  each 
from  each.  But,  since  the  Christian  Church  had  no 
intention  of  surrendering  the  confession  that  "  the  Lord 
our  God  is  one,"  ^^  which  had  been  the  characteristic  note 
of  the  faith  of  the  parent  community  of  Israel,  out  of 

M  In  Joan.  ii.  6.  "^  Enn.   v.    i. 

»''  Deut.  vi.  4  ;  cp.  Mark  xii.  29. 


44  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

which  she  had  arisen  and  whose  Scriptures  she  retained 
as  her  own,  it  was  in  itself  a  defect  in  this  part  of  her 
theological  phraseology  that  it  did  not,  as  it  stood,  more 
decisively  exclude  the  interpretation  which  would  assimi- 
late the  unity  of  the  Godhead  to  the  merely  specific  unity  in 
which  three  several  men  partake.  Now  it  so  happened 
that  a  deficiency  in  the  philosophical  vocabulary  of  the 
Latin-speaking  as  compared  with  that  of  the  Greek- 
speaking  churches  proved  of  service  in  helping  to  remedy 
this  defect. 

We  have  already  seen  that  snhstantia  came  to  be  regarded 
in  philosophical  Latin  as  the  representative  of  the  Greek 
oxjaia,  and  that,  despite  the  high  authority  of  no  less 
a  master  of  the  language  than  Cicero,  essentia,  which 
was  afterwards  to  be  found  useful  in  this  capacity,  long 
failed  to  obtain  a  sure  footing  in  the  language.  Hence 
arose  a  difficulty  in  rendering  into  Latin  the  discrimination 
between  ovaia  and  v-rroaraaiq  necessary  to  the  orthodox 
expression  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  For  substantia, 
which  would  naturally  have  been  used  for  viruaTaaig, 
of  which  it  was  the  direct  translation,  was  wanted  to 
represent  ovaia  ;   what,  then,  was  to  stand  for  uTroarao-ic  ? 

It  would  seem  to  have  been  to  Tertullian  that  the 
currency — if  not  the  discovery — was  due  of  a  word  to  serve 
this  purpose  which  was  ultimately  to  take  the  place  of 
vTTooTaaiQ  in  the  theological  phraseology  of  the  Western 
Church  and  to  suggest  a  useful  variant  for  it  in  that  of 
the  Eastern.  This  word  was  no  other  than  persona,^! 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  meant  primarily  a  part  played 
in  some  form  of  social  intercourse,  and  secondarily  the 
player  of  such  a  part.  Though  used  in  the  connexion 
of  which  we   are  now  speaking   to   stand    for    uTroaraatc, 

'7  See  Tert.  ado.  Pra.xean,  cc.  ii,  12  (Migne,  Patr.  Lai.  II,  167,  c,d). 


PERSONALITY   IN   GENERAL  45 

it  had  already  a  more  nearly  literal  representative  in 
Greek,  namely  irpocnoirov ;  and  this  is  not  unknown 
to  Greek  theology  as  a  synonym  of  vTroaracnq  when 
employed  in  formulating  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 
But  there  seems  reason  to  conjecture  that  the  introduction 
of  this  latter  word  into  Greek  theological  terminology 
was  due  to  the  reaction  of  the  Western  usage  upon  the 
language  of  the  East.  It  first  appears  in  its  theological 
reference  in  the  writings  of  Hippolytus,  who  though  he 
^vrote  in  Greek,  was  himself  a  Western,  a  presbyter  of 
the  Roman  Church,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  in  theo- 
logical and  ecclesiastical  sympathy  with  his  African 
contemporary  Tertullian.^^  This  is  not  the  place  to 
discuss  the  question  of  the  literary  relation  of  Tertullian 
to  Hippolytus.  If  we  could  be  certain  that  Hippolytus' 
use  of  irpoawTTov  was  independent  of  Tertullian,  or  should 
even  suppose — what  is  not  likely — that  it  suggested 
TertuUian's  use  of  persona,  the  evidence  would  still  point 
to  the  Eastern  Church  having  borrowed  the  use  of 
Trpoawirov  from  the  Western,  in  which  Latin  (already, 
no  doubt,  though  Hippolytus  still  wrote  in  Greek,  by 
his  time  the  medium  of  ordinary  intercourse),  became 
with  TertuUian  the  language  of  theological  hterature 
as  well. 

In  any  case  persona  became  the  principal  Latin  repre- 
sentative of  the  Greek  vTroaTamg  in  its  theological 
sense,  and  .we  shall  see  that  the  use  of  its  more  literal 
rendering  irpoaoj-n-ov  as  an  alternative  expression  for 
vnocrramg  in  Greek  balanced  the  suggestion  contained 
in  the  use  of  virocTraatQ  of  a  too  complete  distinction 
of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit  \\dthin  the  Godhead,  as  complete 

>8  Hippolytus  contra  Noetum  §  14  (ed.  Lagarde,  p.  52)  ;  Ref.  Haer. 
X.  12  (ed.  Duncker,  p.  458). 


46  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

as  that  of  three  men  within  the  human  species,  by  a 
suggestion  of  an  exactly  opposite  kind.  For  vpoaioirov 
had  (principally,  as  one  may  suppose,  because  it  had  not 
acquired  the  legal  associations  of  persona)  made  still 
less  progress  than  persona  towards  the  modem  philosophi- 
cal use  of  person.  Primarily,  indeed,  it  meant  the  face, 
not,  like  persona,  the  actor's  mask  (which  was  properly 
in  Greek  irpoaujTrdov).  So  far  as  it  had  come  to  be  used 
at  all  for  an  individual  human  being  it  was  probably 
rather  through  taking  the  'face'  to  stand  for  the  man, 
as  we  speak  of  counting  heads,  than  through  being  used 
for  a  dramatis  persona,  although  it  is  found  also  in  this 
sense.  This  being  the  history  of  the  term  irpoaijj'n-ov,  we 
are  not  surprised  to  find  that  even  more  than  persona 
did  it  suggest  a  mere  aspect  or  role.  Several  such  aspects 
might  be  presented,  several  such  roles  discharged  by  the 
same  individual  at  different  times.  Thus  Trpoaijjirov, 
used  of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit,  might  suggest,  did  one 
but  forget  that  one  might  also  say  vTrnaramg,  that 
the  distinction  between  them  was  one  of  as  superficial, 
perhaps  of  as  temporary  a  character  as  that  between  the 
different  aspects  the  same  man  may  wear  on  different 
occasions,  or  the  different  parts  he  may  take  in  different 
conversations. 

Thus  what  we  may  call  the  philosophical  use  of  person 
in  the  modern  European  languages  has  been  determined 
by  the  use  in  the  formulation  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  of  vTrocrrao-tc  and  persona  as  equivalent 
expressions  ;  and  we  shall  find  that  ambiguities  derived 
from  the  very  different  origins  of  the  two  words  thus 
associated  together  have  left  undeniable  traces  in  the 
treatment  of  the  word  person  by  different  thinkers  in  our 
own  time.     For  the  history  of  philosophical  terms  is  very 


PERSONALITY   IN   GENERAL  47 

far  from  encouraging  the  writer  of  philosophical  books 
in  the  behef  that  he  can  say  with  Humpty  Dumpty  in 
Alice  Through  the  Looking  Glass  that  "  when  I  use  a  word,  it 
means  what  I  choose  it  to  mean — neither  more  nor  less,"  ^9 

To  Boethius  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century  of 
our  era  we  owe  the  definition  of  persona  which  became 
the  standard  definition  for  the  writers  of  the  Middle  Ages 
and  which  is  still  perhaps,  take  it  all  in  all,  the  best  that  we 
have.  It  occurs  in  his  treatise — we  will  speak  of  it  as 
his,  for,  though  his  authorship  has  been  doubted  by  good 
scholars,  the  weight  of  the  evidence  is,  I  think,  on  the 
whole  in  favour  of  it  20 — against  Nestorius  and  Eutyches, 
whose  names  were  associated  respectively  with  two  oppo- 
site views  of  Christ's  personality,  reckoned  by  the  main 
body  of  the  Christian  Church  as  alike  heretical. 

This  celebrated  definition  runs  as  follows  :  Persona 
est  natures  rationahilis  individua  substantia  21  ;    the  indi- 

»9  c.  6. 

*«  In  my  Studies  in  the  History  of  Natural  Theology,  p.  143,  I  ex- 
pressed a  different  opinion  ;  but  I  now  doubt  whether  the  Council 
of  Chalcedon  is  the  assembly  referred  to  in  the  preface  ;  and,  if 
it  is  not,  the  chief  argument  against  the  authenticity  of  the  treatise 
disappears.  On  the  other  hand,  I  cannot  but  think  it  possible 
that  in  the  Anecdoton  Holderi,  to  which  Usener  appeals  as  deciding 
the  question  by  the  unexceptionable  authority  of  Cassiodorus,  the 
copyist  of  the  extract  from  the  latter's  letter  may,  as  Nitzsch 
supposes,  have  interpolated  the  names  of  works  already  ascribed 
in  his  time  to  Boethius.  Still,  as  it  stands,  the  external  evidence 
is  in  favour  of  Boethius's  authorship,  while  I  do  not  feel  so  strongly 
as  Nitzsch  the  difficulty  of  supposing  the  writer  of  the  Consolatio 
Philosophies  to  have  composed  a  Christological  treatise  which, 
while  abounding  in  learning  and  in  the  appreciation  of  intellectual 
subtleties,  gives  no  sign  of  a  deep  personal  religious  interest  in 
the  doctrines  expounded. 

*'  Contra  Eutychen  et  Nestorium,  c.  3.  I  take  this  opportunity 
of  correcting  the  statement  of  the  definition  in  my  Studies,  p.  143, 
where,  through  an  oversight,  the  origin  of  which  I  cannot  now 
explain,  the  false  reading  subsistentia  was  printed  instead  of  the 
certainly  correct  substantia. 


48  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

vidual  subsistence  of  a  rational  nature.  Here  what  I 
may  call  the  double-facedness  of  the  term  is  brought  out. 
For  when  we  use  the  word  person  we  describe  that  which 
we  so  designate  as  an  individual,  not  as  a  universal  which 
may  attach  to  many  individuals.  Rational  nature  taken 
by  itself  as  a  universal  is  not  a  person.  On  the  other 
hand,  neither  is  any  individual  a  person  whose  nature  is 
not  rational :  and  this,  if  we  consider;  means  an  individual 
which  is  not  aware  of  itself  as  an  instance  of  a  universal. 
Thus  an  individual  stone  is  not  a  person,  because,  though 
we  recognize  that  there  is  a  common  nature  which  it 
shares  with  other  stones,  the  stone  itself  is  not  aware  of 
this  ;  nor  is  an  animal,  such  as  a  dog  or  a  horse,  a  person  ; 
for  although  it  may  possess  (for  example  in  the  form  of 
the  attraction  of  sex)  an  instinctive  awareness  of  the 
presence  in  others  of  a  nature  common  to  them  with 
itself,  yet  we  do  not  suppose  that  it  reflects  upon  this  so 
as  to  form  a  general  notion  of  this  common  nature.  Nor 
do  we  naturally  apply  the  term  person  even  to  a  human 
infant  which  has  not  yet  arrived  at  the  stage  of  such 
reflection.  It  is  only  to  nature  human  beings  that 
within  the  sphere  of  our  everyday  experience  we  com- 
monly apply  it  ;  for  only  in  them  do  we  find  a  full  recogni- 
tion of  his  or  her  self  as  at  once  distinct  from  other  selves 
and  as  sharing  along  with  other  selves  in  a  common 
nature.  It  is  true  that  a  corporation  may  be  a  person 
in  law  and  may  be  treated  like  an  individual  man  or 
woman  as  a  subject  of  rights  and  duties.  This  conception 
of  corporate  personality  I  hope  in  my  second  course  of 
Lectures  to  examine  more  closely.  But  I  think  we  must 
admit  that  only  with  an  apology  or  explanation  should 
we  in  ordinary  discourse  speak  of  a  corporation  or  a  com- 
munity of  any  kind  as  a  person  ;    to  call  it  so  without 


PERSONALITY   IN   GENERAL  49 

qualification  would  be  felt  to  be  unnatural  and  pedantic. ^^ 
It  may  seem  strange  that  this  should  be  so  if,  as  appears 
to  be  the  case,  we  find  in  the  earlier  stages  of  civihzation 
not  the  individual  but  the  community  to  which  he  belongs 
regarded  as  the  primary  subject  of  rights  and  duties  ; 
the  crime  of  the  individual  involving  the  guilt  of  his  clan 
or  tribe,  and  the  wrong  done  to  the  individual  calling  for 
the  infliction  of  vengeance  by  any  member  of  his  tribe 
upon  any  member  of  the  offenders.  But  the  development 
of  civilization  has  on  the  whole  been  marked  by  a  tendency 
to  transfer,  at  any  rate  in  respect  of  a  large  part  of  the 
field  of  human  conduct,  this  position  as  the  subject  of 
rights  and  duties  from  the  community  to  the  individual 
member  of  the  community.  When  the  remark  is  made, 
which  we  often  hear  nowadays,  that  Personality  is  a 
comparatively  late  discovery,  it  is  due  to  a  perception 
of  this  historical  fact.  For  (to  quote  some  words  which 
I  have  written  elsewhere)  »3  so  long  as  Personality  is  found, 
not  mainly  in  the  individual,  but  rather  in  the  com- 
munity, so  long  Personality  in  our  sense — the  individual 
subsistence  of  a  rational  nature — is  not  adequately  recog- 
nized. On  the  other  hand,  so  long  as  it  is  only 
acknowledged  in  certain  selected  individuals,  such  as 
a  prince  who,  as  in  Hobbes's  theory,  absorbs  the 
personality  of  all  his  subjects,  or  a  priest  who  is  the 
'  parson  '  or  '  persona  '  of  the  parish  over  which  he 
presides,  so  long  there  is  an  inadequate  recognition  of 
the  individual  subsistence  of  a  rational  nature  in 
the  multitude  of  which  these  are  the  selected  repre- 
sentatives ;  for  the  ordinary  members  of  the  multitude 
are    so    far   regarded   as   mere   individuals,    not   properly 

»*  Cf.  my  Studies  in  the  History  of  Natural  Theology,  p.  143. 
»3  Studies  in  the  History  of  Natural  Theology,  p.    144. 


50  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

persons   in    their    own  right,   but  only    as   such   in  and 
through  their  representatives. 

I  would  further  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  two 
notes  in  the  conception  of  Personality  which  are  expressed 
in  the  definition  of  persona  given  by  Boethius  may  be  said 
to  be  emphasized  the  one  rather  by  that  word  itself, 
the  other  by  what  is  its  Greek  equivalent  in  this  sense  ; 
the  rational  nature  rather  by  persona,  the  individual 
subsistence  by  vTroaraaiq.  The  word  xmotn-aaig  does  not 
by  itself  convey  any  suggestion  of  a  rational  nature. 
There  was  nothing  in  its  etymology  to  forbid  its  applica- 
tion even  to  a  merely  material  thing.  We  have  already 
seen  that  in  one  of  the  earliest  instances  of  its  scientific 
use,  in  the  passage  quoted  above  from  the  pseudo- 
Aristotelian  de  Mundo,  it  is  even  used  to  distinguish  the 
solid  corporeity  of  a  comet  from  a  mere  effect  of  reflected 
light  like  a  rainbow. '4  But  the  later  usage  of  the  word 
had  tended  to  give  to  it  dignified  associations  which  made 
it  suggest  a  higher  kind  of  reality  than  could  be  ascribed 
to  a  mere  inanimate  thing,  Boethius  himself — if  the 
treatise  be  really  his — asserts,  in  the  context  of  the  defi- 
nition of  persona  which  I  have  been  quoting,  that  the 
Greeks  do  not  use  u7rooTacr<c  even  of  irrational  animals  but 
only  of  rational  beings.  This  is  probably  not  true  in  the 
unqualified  form  in  which  it  is  here  asserted.  But  it 
must  have  had  some  ground  in  fact ;  and,  if  we  take  it 
to  proceed  from  Boethius,  it  must  be  allowed  very  con- 
siderable weight.  A  man  so  well  read  in  Greek  literature, 
philosophical,  scientific,  and  theological,  as  Boethius 
certainly  was — he  had  translated  into  Latin  Plato,  Aristotle, 
Archimedes,  and  Euclid,  as  well  as  written  on  the  chief 
theological  controversies  of  the  day — would  scarcely 
»4  De  Mundo  4,  395,  a.  30.     See  above,  p.  37. 


PERSONALITY  IN   GENERAL  51 

have  made  such  a  statement  had  it  not  held  good  in  a 
notable  majority  of  instances.  We  have  already  observed 
that  not  only  was  it  the  word  used  by  the  Christian  theolo- 
gians of  the  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit  whom  they  worshipped 
as  one  God,  but  it  was  also  employed  by  Plotinus  to  desig- 
nate the  three  members  of  his  Trinity — the  Supreme  Good, 
the  Intelligence,  and  the  World-Soul — a  Trinity  suggested 
by  the  TimcBiis  of  Plato,  and  despite  important  differences, 
presenting  a  certain  correspondence  with  the  Trinity  of 
the  Christians.  The  use,  then,  of  viroaTaaig  to  denote 
the  members  alike  of  the  Neo-Platonic  and  of  the  Christian 
Trinity  suggests  that  Boethius  was  justified  in  calling 
attention  to  this  association  of  special  dignity  with  the 
word  as  characteristic  of  Greek  thought  as  a  whole  during 
the  period  in  which  it  had  been  used  as  a  technical  term  of 
philosophy. 

But  if  virooTaaiq,  despite  the  absence  of  any  suggestion 
of  the  kind  in  the  etymology  of  the  word,  had  come  to 
imply  the  individual  subsistence  not  of  any  nature,  but 
only  of  a  rational  nature,  persona  was  from  the  first 
obviously  inappropriate  to  any  but  a  rational  nature. 
Only  a  rational  being  could  be  an  actor  in  a  play  or  a 
party  to  a  suit  or  contract.  On  the  other  hand,  as  has 
already  been  pointed  out,  there  was  lacking  in  persona 
(and  perhaps  still  more  in  its  Greek  representative 
TT/ooo-wTTov)  any  decided  suggestion  of  a  permanent, 
inalienable,  fundamental  individuality.  Rather  did  it 
carry  with  it  the  associations  of  an  occasional,  temporary, 
voluntary  activity,  although  no  doubt  also  of  one  which 
distinguished  him  who  exercised  it  from  the  mass  of  his 
fellows  and  made  him  in  some  particular  respect  an  out- 
standing figure.  An  individual  man  is  not  born  a  player, 
a  litigant,  or  an  official ;    when  he  ceases  to  act  in  any 


52  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

of  these  capacities,  he  does  not  thereupon  cease  to  be, 
nor  while  he  is  acting  in  them  do  they  absorb  the  whole 
of  his  existence. 

I  said  in  my  first  Lecture  that  when  Lotze  ascribes  to 
the  Absolute  Personality  and  Mr,  Bosanquet  Individuality 
but  not  Personality,  we  have  to  do  with  something  more 
than  a  merely  verbal  difference.  But  though  this  is  true, 
the  difference  between  them  in  this  respect  is  a  difference 
upon  which  the  history  of  the  word  Person  will  be  found 
to  throw  some  light.  We  shall  have  at  a  later  stage  of 
our  inquiry  to  consider  the  deeper  significance  of  it  ; 
at  present  I  desire  to  call  attention  to  its  verbal  aspect. 

Mr.  Bosanquet  is  true  to  what  may  be  said  to  be  the  Hege- 
lian tradition,  for  which  the  legal  associations  oi  persona  are 
what  on  the  whole  determine  the  use  of  the  words  Person 
and  Personlichkeit^s  A  person,  to  be  a  person,  must  stand 
in  relation  to  other  persons,  and  it  is  where  this  relation 
is  of  a  merely  judicial  or  legal  character  that  the  expres- 
sion is  especially  in  place ;  for  in  the  higher  kinds  of  such 
relationship — in  marriage  or  in  the  State — the  parties 
to  the  relation  tend  to  lose  their  separate  personality  and 
become  factors  in  the  inclusive  personality  of  the  family 
or  of  the  State,  which  can  then  be  treated  as  persons, 
just  because  they  stand  over  against  other  families  or 
other  States  with  claims  and  counterclaims  upon  them, 
such  as  the  several  men  and  women  who  constitute  them 
have  upon  one  another  when  they  are  not  conscious  of 
a  higher  unity  superseding  their  mutual  independence. 

When  Personality  is  viewed  from  this  angle,  it  is  intel- 

^5  Hegel's  use  of  '  person  '  is  perhaps  not  quite  consistent.  Thus 
he  sometimes  says  that  all  living  beings  are  subjects  but  that  only 
some  are  persons  {Phil.  d.  Rechts  §  35,  Werke,  viii.  p.  71),  some- 
times that  the  person  becomes  a  subject  when  passing  from  legality 
to  morality  (ibid.  §  105,  p.  144). 


PERSONALITY   IN   GENERAL  53 

ligible  that  it  should  seem  an  attribute  wholly  inapplicable 
to  the  Absolute,  which  cannot  stand  in  an  external  relation 
to  anything  else.  On  the  other  hand,  just  because  all 
relations  must  fall  within  it,  the  Absolute  alone  can  from 
this  point  of  view  be  called  in  the  strictest  sense  an  indi- 
vidual ;  beings  like  ourselves  who  are  persons  are  for 
that  very  reason  possessed  only  of  a  quasi-indi vidua  lity  ; 
we  are  aware  of  ourselves  as,  in  the  phrase  of  Descartes,*^ 
res  incompletes,  beings  whose  nature  cannot  be  fully 
described  without  bringing  in  the  mention  of  beings 
other  than  ourselves,  our  relations  to  which  constitute 
what  we  ourselves  are.  To  the  all-inclusive  reality  of  the 
Absolute  personality  is  inapplicable,  but  individuality  is 
its  prerogative  ;  we,  on  the  other  hand,  just  because  we 
are  persons,  can  only  be  called  individuals  in  a  qualified 
sense  and,  as  it  were,  by  courtesy. 

The  way  in  which  Lotze  looks  at  Personality  is  quite 
different.  For  him,^?  though  each  of  us  may  only  be  able 
to  think  of  his  self  as  contrasted  with  what  is  not  self, 
yet  one  may  experience  one's  self  "  previous  to  and  out 
of  every  such  relation  "  and  "  to  this  is  due  the  possi- 
bility of  its  subsequently  becoming  thinkable  in  that 
relation."  That  to  which  PersonaHty  can  properly  be 
ascribed  is  an  "  inner  core,  which  cannot  be  resolved 
into  thoughts  "28;  of  this  "inner  core"  we  know  the 
meaning  and  significance  "  in  the  immediate  experience 
of  our  mental  life  "  and  "  we  always  misunderstand  it 
when  we  seek  to  construe  it." 

We  will  not  at  present  pursue  further  Lotze's  account 
of  Personality,  to  which  we  must  hereafter  return.     But 

»6  Medit.  iii.  sub  fin. 

»7  See  Microcosmus,  ix.  4  §  4,  Eng.  tr.  ii.   p.  680. 

j8  Ibid.  p.  682. 


54  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

what  I  have  quoted  from  it  is  sufficient  to  explain  why 
he,  unlike  Mr.  Bosanquet,  can  ascribe  Personality  to  the 
Absolute,  and  indeed  in  the  strictest  sense  to  nothing 
else.  For  only  an  Infinite  Being  can  be  supposed  con- 
sciously to  possess  its  whole  nature  in  the  manner  in 
which  we  consciously  possess  that  part  of  our  experience 
which  we  feel  to  be  most  intimately  our  own.  The  con- 
siderations which  determine  Lotze  in  appropriating  Per- 
sonality to  the  Infinite  are  closely  akin  to  those  which 
determine  Mr.  Bosanquet  to  a  like  appropriation  of  Indi- 
viduality to  the  Absolute.  But  that  it  is  Personality 
which  he  can  thus  appropriate  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
with  Lotze  the  legal  associations  of  the  word  do  not,  as 
with  Mr.  Bosanquet,  dominate  his  conception  of  its 
meaning,  and  that  for  him  it  corresponds  more  closely 
than  with  Mr.  Bosanquet,  faithful  as  he  is  to  the  Hegelian 
tradition  of  insistence  on  those  legal  associations,  to 
vTroaraaiQ  as  employed  by  the  Greeks  whose  usage  Boethius 
reports  to  us. 

The  general  history  of  the  word  Person  with  its  deri- 
vatives in  philosophical  terminology  may  be  said  to  have 
moved  on  the  whole  throughout  on  lines  determined  for 
it  by  the  process  whose  result  is  summed  up  in  the  Boethian 
definition  of  persona.  Within  these  lines  there  has  been 
a  continual  oscillation,  according  as  the  thought,  em- 
phasized by  the  Greek  word  virocTTamq,  of  independent 
and  fundamentally  unchangeable  individuality,  or  the 
thought  of  social  relationship  and  voluntary  activity, 
suggested  by  the  Latin  word  persona,  has  been  upper- 
most. But  it  will  be  convenient,  before  leaving  this 
general  history  of  the  word  and  the  notions  corresponding 
to  it  for  a  more  particular  consideration  of  the  history 
of  its  application  to  God,  to  advert  to  certain    aspects 


PERSONALITY  IN   GENERAL  55 

of  Personality  which,  although  they  may  be  brought 
within  the  scope  of  the  Boethian  formula,  were  not  so 
much  emphasized  in  the  earlier  discussions  which  have 
chiefly  occupied  our  attention  hitherto  as  they  have  been 
in  later  times.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  .discuss  them 
exhaustively,  but  shall  only  conclude  this  Lecture  by 
indicating  them  in  a  brief  and  summary  manner. 

Three  such  aspects  of  Personality  may  be  noted.  We 
may  label  them  as  incommunicahility ,  self-consciousness, 
and  will  respectively.  Stress  was  already  laid  upon 
the  first  of  these,  incommunicahility ,  in  a  passage  of  the 
twelfth-century  mystic  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  which  was 
often  quoted  by  later  Schoolmen  ;  and  to  dwell  upon 
this  feature  of  Personality  was  congenial  to  the  tendency 
which  from  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  mani- 
fested itself  in  mediaeval  philosophy  towards  preoccupation 
with  the  problem  of  Individuality.  It  is  obvious  that, 
in  emphasizing  the  incommunicable  nature  of  Personality, 
the  writers  whom  I  have  in  mind  were  attending  to 
that  side  of  the  conception  of  Personality,  as  defined 
by  Boethius,  which  is  expressed  by  the  words  individua 
substantia  and  suggests  me  Greek  word  uTroorao-tc,  rather 
than  to  that  expressed  by  the  words  naturce  rationahilis 
which  remind  one  more  of  the  original  associations  of  the 
Latin  persona.  It  became  the  custom  to  use  in  defining 
persona  phrases  which,  like  suppositum,  or  ens  complctum, 
called  attention  chiefly  to  its  concrete  individuality, 
though  of  course  with  some  such  epithet  as  intellectualc 
to  distinguish  persons  from  supposita  (concrete  indi- 
viduals) of  a  lower  rank  ;  and  this  practice  still  persisted 
among  the  philosophical  theologians  of  the  sixteenth 
and  early  seventeenth  centuries. '9 

»9  See  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  de  Trin.  iv.  6,  8,  21,  22,  23,  24  (Migne, 


56  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

As  we  should  expect,  the  new  direction  given  to  specu- 
lation by  Descartes  was  not  without  its  effect  upon  the 
way  in  which  the  subject  of  Personality  was  approached. 
It  is  well  known  that  Descartes,  after  attempting  to 
carry  doubt  as  far  as  it  would  go,  had  found  one  thing 
which  he  could  not  doubt,  namely  the  existence  of  his 
own  thinking  self  ;  since  even  to  doubt  he  must  think, 
and  to  think  he  must  exist  ;  and  that,  starting  from  this 
sole  ultimate  bedrock  of  certainty,  he  worked  back  to 
assurance  of  the  existence,  first  of  God  and  then  of  the 
world  of  objects.  Now  in  following  this  procedure  and 
treating  the  mind  of  man  as  the  one  indubitable  reality, 
he  broke  away  from  the  conviction,  which  the  philosophy 
of  the  Middle  Ages  had  inherited  from  antiquity,  that 
the  existence  of  something  real  other  than  the  mind  of 
man  was  beyond  question,  and  introduced  into  European 
thought  that  pyschological  bias,  if  I  may  so  describe 
it,  the  presence  of  which  in  so  much  of  the  speculation 
of  the  last  three  centuries  perhaps  more  than  anything 
else  differentiates-  it  from  that  of  the  preceding  ages. 
The  change  of  point  of  view  due  to  the  introduction  of 
this  bias  is  marked  by  the  changes  in  philosophical  ter- 
minology to  which  it  has  led.  Thus  subjective  formerly 
meant  what  belonged  to  the  existence  of  things  as  they 
were  in   themselves,   independent   of   our   perception   or 

Patr.  Lat.  cxcvi.  934  seqq.) ;  Durandus  a  Sancto  Porciano  in  Sent. 
iii.  II,  2  §  10,  ii.  3.  2  §  5  ;  Duns  Scotus  in  Sent.  (Op.  Oxon.)  I  dist. 
23,  qu.  I.  4  ;  Ockham  in  Sent.  i.  dist.  23,  qu.  i.  Richard  of 
St.  Victor  held  that  the  Boethian  definition  as  it  stood  was  in- 
sufficient to  distinguish  the  divine  persons  from  the  '  undivided 
substance'  of  the  Trinity. 

See  also  Melanchthon,  Loc.  Theol.  de  tribus  Personis  Divinitatis  ', 
Turretinus,  Inst.  Theol.  (167^)  loc.  III.  qu.  23  §§  4,  8 ;  Bellarmine, 
de  Christo,  ii.  4  ;  Sherlock,  Vindication  of  the  Doctrine  oj  the  Trinity, 
p.  69. 


PERSONALITY  IN   GENERAL  57 

knowledge  of  them,  objective  what  belonged  to  them  as 
presented  to  or  apprehended  by  consciousness.  But  now, 
since  for  Descartes  the  only  thing  whose  existence  was 
directly  and  indubitably  certain  was  the  conscious  mind, 
this  conscious  mind  has  arrogated  to  itself  the  designation 
of  Subject  par  excellence  and  subjective  has  come  to  mean 
what  belongs  to  it,  objective  what  is  in  any  particular 
connexion  contrasted  with  it. 

There  was  another  famous  term,  very  similar  in  origin 
and  history  to  Subject :  I  mean  Substance.  Subject  of 
course  originated  as  a  rendering  of  viroKdfjuvov  and 
Substantia  as  we  have  seen  of  vTroaracnQ,  and  I  have 
already  touched  upon  the  early  relationship  of  these  two 
Greek  terms. 

Now  the  term  Substance  was  for  the  philosophers  of 
the  age  inaugurated  by  Descartes  a  fruitful  source  of 
embarrassment,  just  because  the  thought  which  it  was  apt 
to  call  up  of  an  unperceived  foundation,  concealed  under- 
neath those  immediate  objects  of  our  consciousness  of 
which  we  are  actually  aware,  was  not  easily  harmonized 
with  a  philosophy  which  found  in  awareness  or  conscious- 
ness itself  what  is  surest  and  deepest  and  most  abiding. 
No  wonder,  then,  that  the  notion  of  Personality  was  pro- 
foundly affected  by  this  new  set  of  the  currents  of  thought, 
and  that  self-consciousness,  that  is  consciousness  of  self, 
came  to  be  considered  the  essence  of  Personality. 

The  expression  '  self-consciousness  '  probably  originated 
in  England,  where  we  find  it  used  by  Locke  3°  and  other 
writers  of  his  time  and  playing  a  considerable  part  in  the 
Trinitarian    controversy   which    agitated   the   learned   of 

30  Essay  ii.  27  §  16  (cp.  ibid.  §§  23,  26) ;  Sherlock,  Vindication,  p.  49  ,* 
South,  Animadversions  upon  Dr  Sherlock,  London,  1693,  pp.  jo 
foU. 


58  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

that  country  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eighteenth  century.  But  it  afterwards  seems 
almost  to  have  disappeared  from  the  EngUsh  language. 
As  a  philosophical  term  it  was  brought  back  into  it  in  the 
nineteenth  century  by  British  thinkers  who  wrote  under 
the  influence  of  German  idealism,  as  a  translation  of  the 
German  Selbst-bewusstsein,  which  itself  may  not  im- 
probably have  been  at  first  a  rendering  of  the  old  English 
term. 

Although  Self-consciousness  had  no  doubt  been  always 
implied  in  the  definitions  which  spoke  of  a  "  naturae 
rationahilis  indi vidua  substantia  "  or  of  a  "  suppositum 
intellectuale,"  yet  the  changed  attitude  towards  the  old 
problems  led  to  emphasis  on  what  in  those  definitions  was 
adjectival,  almost  or  quite  to  the  exclusion  of  what  in 
them  was  substantive.  When  Christian  Wolff,  the 
Schoolman  of  the  Enlightenment,  defines  Person  as 
Ein  Ding  das  Sich  bewusst  ist,3^  a  thing  that  is  conscious  of 
itself,  the  words  might  stand  as  a  translation  of  Ockham's 
suppositum  intellectuale  ;  yet  the  balance  of  the  phrases 
is  characteristically  different.  In  Wolff's  definition  as 
compared  with  Ockham's  the  substantive  is  the  vaguest, 
most  colourless  word  which  could  be  found,  instead  of 
one  implying  a  whole  metaphysical  theory  ;  while  the 
adjectival  clause  describes  in  terms  which  at  any  rate 
seem  unambiguous  the  activity  which  in  the  older  formula 
is  merely  designated  by  a  conventional  epithet  that  might 
well  be  thought  to  stand  itself  in  need  of  explanation. 

Since  the  philosophical  revolution  which  we  associate 
with  the  name  of  Descartes,  one  other  remains  to  be 

3«  Verniinftige  Gedancken  von  Gott,  der  Welt,  und  der  Seele  (Halle, 
1 751)  §  924.  P-  570,  God  (ibid.  §  979,  p.  603)  sich  seiner  bewusst  ist  ; 
but  the  word  Person  is  not  applied   to  him. 


PERSONALITY   IN   GENERAL  59 

mentioned  as  having  affected  in  an  important  degree 
our  way  of  regarding  Personality.  The  name  which  we 
connect  with  this  revolution  is  that  of  Kant.  Although 
Descartes  had  broken  away  from  the  tradition  of  ancient 
and  mediaeval  thought  in  treating  our  own  mental  activity 
as  the  one  unquestionable  fact  of  experience,  he  had 
remained  faithful  to  what  had  been  the  main  (though 
not  the  sole)  tradition  of  the  earlier  schools  in  recognizing 
the  primacy  of  cognition  among  the  forms  of  that  activity. 
It  was  Kant  32  whose  proclamation  of  the  primacy  of  the 
practical  over  the  theoretical  reason  gave  the  chief  impulse 
to  the  tendency,  apparent  in  much  recent  speculation, 
to  find  in  will  rather  than  in  cognition  the  most  funda- 
mental characteristic  of  the  experienced  mental  activity, 
wherein  rather  than  in  anything  underlying  experience, 
called  '  substantial  soul '  or  the  like,  the  modern  world 
had  come  to  seek  the  essence  of  Personality.  It  will  not, 
however,  escape  the  notice  of  the  practised  student  of  the 
history  of  thought  that  an  emphasis  on  will  rather  than 
on  cognition  may  easily  lead  to  the  search  for  the  true 
sources  of  mental  activity  below  (to  use  a  now  familiar 
metaphor)  '  the  threshold  of  consciousness,'  and  thereby 
to  a  reinstatement  of  something  strangely  like  the 
mysterious  underlying  substance  or  suppositum  of  the 
older  Schools,  which  the  philosophy  of  experience  believed 
itself  to  have  exorcised. 

I  have  in  the  last  few  paragraphs  of  this  Lecture  very 
briefly  and  summarily  indicated  movements  of  thought 

3 J  But  Leibnitz  already  defines  persona  thus  :  "  Persona  est  cuius 
aliqua  voluntas  est,  seu  cuius  datur  cogitatio,  affectus,  voluptas, 
dolor."  This  definition  (which  I  have  not  been  able  to  find)  is 
quoted  by  Wallace,  Essays  on  Moral  Philosophy  VI  [Lectures  and 
Essays,  p.  273),  without  a  reference  to  the  work  from  which  it  is 
taken. 


60  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

the  accurate  description  of  which  would  require  a  much 
more  extended  treatment.  But  perhaps  what  I  have 
said  will  be  sufficient  to  form  a  background  to  our  later 
investigations.  And  for  the  present  I  pass  from  the 
general  history  of  the  notion  of  Personality  to  the  his- 
tory of  its  application  to  God.  This  history  will  form 
the  topic  of  my  third  Lecture. 


LECTURE   III 

HISTORY   OF   THE   NOTION    OF    PERSONALITY 
AS  APPLIED   TO  GOD 

As  in  the  last  Lecture,  so  in  this,  it  is  a  historical  investi- 
gation which  will  engage  our  attention.  Having  out- 
lined the  history  of  persona  as  a  philosophical  term,  a 
history  in  tracing  which  we  have  often  had  to  advert 
-to  its  use  in  the  formulation  of  theological  dogma,  I  have 
now  to  invite  you  to  a  more  particular  consideration  of 
its  use  and  that  of  its  recognized  equivalents  as  applied 
to  God. 

It  is  so  often  taken  for  granted  nowadays  that  the 
Personality  of  God  is  a  principal  tenet  of  Christianity 
that  it  is  not  without  surprise  that  we  find  this  expression 
not  only  entirely  absent  from  the  historical  creeds  and 
confessions  of  the  Christian  Church,  but  even,  until  quite 
modern  times,  in  the  estimation  of  all  but  the  minority 
of  Christians  who  reject  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  re- 
garded as  unorthodox.  Nevertheless  it  is  beyond  question 
that  historically  it  was  in  connexion  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  that  the  words  '  person  '  and  '  personaUty  ' 
came  to  be  used  of  the  Divine  Being ;  and  that  God  was 
first  ^  described  as  '  a  person '  by  certain  theologians  of 

'  But  see  p.  68 «.  below  for  an  anticipation  of  this  language  by 
Paul  of  Samosata  in  the  third  century. 

61 


C2  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

the  sixteenth  century  not  so  much  by  way  of  positively 
asserting  an  important  truth  of  theology  as  by  way  of 
denying  that  he  was  rightly  said  to  be  three  persons.  The 
most  influential  of  the  anti-Trinitarian  divines  of  the 
Reformation  period,  Faustus  Socinus,  was  followed  by  the 
compilers  of  the  Racovian  Catechism  (the  official  standard 
of  the  first  organized  Church  since  the  Reformation  to 
profess  Unitarianism)  in  expressly  stating  that,  though 
God  may  rightly  be  said  to  be  one  Person,  since  in  the 
case  of  an  intellectual  being  numerical  (as  opposed  to 
merely  specific)  unity  is  not  to  be  distinguished  from  per- 
sonality, yet  belief  in  the  unity  of  his  Person  is  not  neces- 
sary to  salvation  ;  for  those  who  hold  that  he  exists 
in  three  Persons,  however  absurd  their  view,  may  obey 
his  will  as  revealed  by  Christ,  and  so  may  be  saved.* 
It  would  be  interesting  to  ascertain  the  first  occurrence 
of  the  expression  '  Personality  of  God  '  as  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  find  it  used  now,  apart  from  any  reference  to 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  a  Trinity  of  persons  in  one  Divine 
Nature.  There  can  in  any  case,  I  think,  be  little  doubt 
that  it  should  be  sought  among  the  writers  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  in  the  period  which  historians  of  philosophy 
sometimes   describe    as   that   of   the   enlightenment. 3     I 

'  See  Socinus,  ChristiancB  Religionis  Institutio  (0pp.  ;  p.  652)  : 
Catech.  Racov.,  de  Cognitione  Dei  c.  i  (ed.  Lat.  1609,  p.  29).  Serve- 
tus,  on  the  other  hand,  called  Christ,  who  in  his  view  existed  from 
the  beginning  of  the  world  as  the  archetype  of  humanity,  the 
'  person  of  God.'  Nee  est  alia  Dei  persona  nisi  Christus,  non  est  alia, 
Dei  hypostasis  {de  Trin.  erronibus  ed.  1531,  p.  112).  His  disciple, 
Valentinus  Gentilis  expressly  denied  the  propriety  of  applying  the 
term  persona  to  God  the  Father  (Brevis  Eyplicatio,   1567,  p.  3). 

3  On  WolS  see  above,  Lecture  II,  p.  58.  Kant,  who  defines 
Person  (Rechtslehre :  Werke,  ed.  Hart.  vii.  p.  20)  as  a  being  dessen 
Handlung  einer  Zurechnung  fdhig  sind,  could  not  have  held  the  term 
applicable  to  one  who  was  sovereign  and  not  subject  in  the  '  king- 
dom of  ends.'     I  do  not  actually  know  of  any  instance  of  the  use 


PERSONALITY   AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD        63 

may  be  allowed  to  indicate  certain  characteristics  of  the 
thought  of  this  period,  which  would  have  assisted  an 
expression  with  Unitarian  associations,  though  not,  so 
far  as  I  know,  employed  by  Unitarian  writers  (Priestley, 
for  example,  appears  to  avoid  it)  to  escape,  even  in  quarters 
where  the  Trinitarian  theology  was  not  abandoned,  the 
suspicion  which  would  have  attached  to  it  on  that  account 
in  the  preceding  age.  On  the  one  hand  several  of  the 
influences  then  most  potent  in  the  world  of  thought 
tended  to  draw  away  attention  from  Trinitarian  specu- 
lations and  to  fasten  it  upon  the  unity  of  the  Divine  Nature. 
Such  was  the  great  progress  made  by  mathematical  and 
mechanical  science  in  the  period  illustrated  by  the  names 
of  Galileo  and  Newton,  revealing  as  it  did  with  ever 
increasing  clearness  the  unity  of  the  material  system,  and 
thereby  impressing  with  ever  increasing  force  upon  the 
mind  the  unity  of  its  Cause,  but  at  the  same  time  en- 
couraging an  abstract  and  unhistorical  mode  of  thinking, 
to  which  a  doctrine  like  that  of  the  Trinity,  which  seeks 
to  construe  the  Highest  in  terms  of  a  life  of  love,  could 
make  but  little  appeal.  Such,  again,  was  the  movement 
in  philosophy  inaugurated  by  Descartes  with  its  pref- 
erence for  '  clear  and  distinct  ideas  '  such  as  are  especially 
afforded  by  the  sciences  to  which  I  have  just  referred. 
To  those  in  whom  this  preference  was  strong  the  mysterious 
and  enigmatic  character  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
rendered  it  naturally  uncongenial ;  while  there  are  per- 
haps at  any  time  but  few  who,  following  the  celebrated 

of  '  the  Personality  of  God  '  in  our  sense  before  Schleiermacher's 
Reden  iiber  die  Religion  II  (Oberdas  W  e  sen  der  Religion) ,  but  bespeaks 
as  though  the  expression  were  already  known  and  by  some  insisted 
upon.  Its  currency  in  England  is,  however,  most  probably  to  be 
attributed  to  its  appearance  in  Paley's  Natural  Theology,  the 
23rd  chapter  of  which  is  devoted  to  '  The  Personality  of  the  Deity.' 
This  work  appeared  in  1802. 


64  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

counsel  given  to  Priestley  4  by  Bishop  Horsley,  to  read 
the  Parmenides,  have  learned  from  Plato  that  the  con- 
ception of  unity  is  also  not  without  grave  difficulties  of 
its  own. 

Such,  once  more,  was  the  philosophy  of  Locke,  with 
its  cautious  resolve  to  plant  its  feet  upon  the  firm 
ground  of  experience  and  to  abjure  excursions  into 
regions  with  the  knowledge  of  which  our  happiness 
or  misery  has  nothing  to  do  ;  and  to  the  temperament 
characteristic  of  that  age  the  regions  of  speculative 
theology  which  had  exercised  the  subtle  wits  of 
Platonists  and  Schoolmen  in  earlier  times  were  apt 
to  appear  regions  deserving   so  to  be  described. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  view  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
(which  is  now  authoritative  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church) 
that,  while  Reason  could  demonstrate  the  unity  of  God, 
Revelation  alone  could  make  known  to  us  the  trinity  of 
persons  therein,  had  come  to  prevail  among  the  adherents 
of  tradition  ;  a  view  which  relieves  a  theology  claiming 
to  be  Natural  or  Rational  from  any  obligation  to  trouble 
itself  with  a  doctrine  which  is  declared  by  its  defenders 
to  be  of  necessity  altogether  beyond  its  sphere. 

When  we  consider  the  direction  taken  by  these  various 
currents  of  thought,  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  note 
in  the  philosophical  theology  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
even  among  those  who  had  no  intention  of  abandoning 
the  traditional  doctrines,  a  marked  tendency  towards 
the  Unitarian  conception  of  deity,  nor  to  fmd  coming  into 
use  among  theologians  of  all  schools  a  phrase  like  '  the 
Personality  of  God,'  which,  in  days  when  sensitiveness 
to    the   points    of   Trinitarian    controversy   was   greater, 

4  In  his  fifteenth  letter  .to  Priestley.  See  Horsley 's  Tracts  in 
Controversy  with  Dr.  Priestley  (Dundee,   1812),  p.  287. 


PERSONALITY   AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD         65 

would  have  committed  him  who  used  it  to  a  downright 
denial  of  the  dogma  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Accordingly 
we  find  Schleiermacher  in  the  last  year  of  the  eighteenth 
century  referring  to  it  as  an  expression  familiar  to  his 
hearers  and  Paley  in  the  third  year  of  the  nineteenth 
devoting  a  chapter  of  his  Natural  Theology  to  the  '  Per- 
sonality of  the  Deity.'  But  even  after  this,  it  is  sur- 
prising to  find  how  little  in  use  the  phrase  seems  to 
have  been  at  any  rate  among  English  divines  until  the 
nineteenth  century  had  run  more  than  half  its 
course. 

We  have,  then,  as  historians,  to  note  this  fact  :  that, 
while  the  affirmation  of  Personality  in  God  has  been 
a  characteristic  of  Christian  theological  terminology 
since  the  third  century  of  our  era,  the  great  majority  of 
Christian  theologians  down  to  quite  modern  times  have 
not  affirmed  in  so  many  words  the  Personality  of  God. 
I  am  not,  of  course,  asserting  that  the  majority  of  Christian 
theologians,  and  indeed  of  Jewish  and  Mohammedan 
theologians  as  well,  to  mention  no  others,  have  not 
ascribed  to  God  attributes  which  it  may  plausibly  be 
argued  can  belong  only  to  persons.  At  present  I  am 
concerned  only  with  the  actual  ascription  of  Personality 
itself  to  God. 

We  have  seen  that  the  word  persona  was  first  used  in 
theology  to  describe  the  respective  bearers  of  the  three 
names,  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit,  the  use  of  which,  not 
alternatively  but  in  combination,  the  Christian  Church 
had  early  come  to  regard  as  necessary  to  express  the 
fullness  of  the  Godhead  as  apprehended  in  her  worship  ; 
and  that  only  long  afterwards  did  it  begin  to  be  employed 
of  the  Godhead  as  a  whole.  We  have  seen  also  that 
the   apphcation   of   the   word   to   the    members   of   the 


66  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

Christian  Trinity  owed  its  currency  to,  if  it  was  not 
originated  by,  Tertullian,  the  first  of  the  great  Christian 
theologians  to  write  in  the  Latin  tongue.  Professor 
Harnack,  to  whose  labours  all  students  of  the  history  of 
Christian  dogma  owe  so  great  a  debt,  now  admits  that  in 
his  earlier  discussion  of  the  circumstances  which  may  have 
recommended  this  word  to  Tertullian  for  use  in  this 
connexion,  he  laid  an  exaggerated  stress  upon  its 
legal  associations. 5  These  must  certainly  not  be  left 
out  of  account ;  but  I  think  we  should  be  nearer  the  truth 
in  seeking  our  principal  clue  to  the  theological  meaning 
of  the  term  in  the  sense  which  it  had  come  to  bear  and 
still  bears  in  grammar,  when  we  speak  of  the  first,  second, 
and  third  persons  in  the  conjugation  of  a  verb.  A  study 
of  Tertullian's  language  will,  I  think,  tend  to  show  that 
what  he  had  most  often  in  his  mind  was  the  fact  that  the 
Scriptures  contained  passages  of  colloquy  wherein  both 
addressing  and  addressed,  and  sometimes  also  the  subject 
of  their  discourse,  were  alike  treated  as  divine. ^ 

Now  no  doubt  this  uncritical  use  of  Scripture  texts 
as  authoritative  and  unquestionable  sources  of  informa- 
tion with  respect  to  the  Divine  Nature,  though  not  so  many 
years  since  it  seemed  to  most  of  our  own  forefathers 
quite  fit  and  reasonable  and  is  by  no  means  even  now 
extinct  among  our  countrymen,  may  perhaps  appear 
nowadays  to  a  cultivated  and  academic  audience  to  take 
away  from  the  speculation  which  finds  its  starting-point 
therein  any  but  a  purely  archaeological  interest.  But  to 
neglect  that  speculation  altogether  on  this  account  would 
be  unwise.  For  the  thoughts  of  sincere  and  active  minds 
are  never  fairly  to  be  judged  by  a  mere  inspection  of  the 

$  See  Dogmengeschichte,  4th  ed.,  i.  p.  576n. 
6  See  Tertullian  adv.  Praxean,  c.c.  11,  12. 


PERSONALITY   AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD         67 

form  in  which  their  reasoning9  are  expressed.  This  form 
may  often  betray  the  presence  of  prejudice,  illusion,  or 
error,  and  we  do  well  to  be  on  the  watch  to  detect  any 
infection  thereby  of  the  substance  of  the  conclusion ; 
and  yet  that  substance  may  itself  prove  to  be  in  part, 
even  in  great  part,  sound  and  unaffected  by  the  false 
opinions  of  the  thinker. 

And  so  in  the  present  instance,  when,  in  respect  of 
Tertullian's  reliance  on  his  proof-texts  from  the  Bible, 
one  has  made  all  allowances  for  his  ignorance  of  Hebrew 
and  of  the  history  of  the  old  Testament,  for  his  bondage 
to  the  letter  of  the  old  Latin  translation,  and  for  his  readi- 
ness to  treat,  in  Matthew  Arnold's  famous  phrase,  '  litera- 
ture '  as  '  dogma,'  there  still  remains  in  the  discussions 
to  which  I  am  referring  a  solid  foundation  with  which 
we  have  to  reckon.  This  solid  foundation  is  the  pro- 
found impression  made  by  the  attitude  towards  God 
attributed  in  the  Gospels  to  the  Founder  of  the  Christian 
religion  and  the  inference  to  which  it  had  led  that  the 
personal  relation — I  use  the  term  advisedly — of  loving 
sonship  in  which  Jesus  Christ  was  there  represented  as 
standing  towards  his  Father  in  heaven  was  the  revelation 
of  a  permanent  and  essential  feature  of  the  divine  life, 
further  testimony  to  which  it  was  then  only  natural  that 
Christians  should  seek,  and  not  surprising,  considering 
their  intellectual  environment,  that  they  should  have 
been  .over-easily  satisfied  to  find,  in  writings  which  they 
had  always  been  taught  to  regard  as  verbally  inspired. 

It  was  only  to  express  that  which  distinguished  one 
from  another  of  the  members  of  the  Trinity  acknow- 
ledged by  the  Christian  Church  to  exist  within  the  unity 
of  the  Godhead  that  the  word  '  Person  '  was  regularly 
employed  in  theology  down  to  the  period  of  the  Reforma- 


68  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

tion.7  During  that  period,  even  when  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  was  disputed,  the  use  of  this  word  '  Person  ' 
as  applied  to  God  was  so  closely  associated  with  that 
doctrine  that  those  who  altogether  rejected  the  doctrine, 
or  at  least  desired  to  let  it  fall  into  the  background,  either 
avoided  the  word  altogether  or  employed  it  merely  in 
defining  their  attitude  towards  the  traditional  system. 
But  in  the  course  of  the  last  two  centuries,  under  the 
influences  which  I  have  indicated,  the  expression  '  Per- 
sonality of  God,'  apart  from  reference  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  has  come  into  general  use,  and  in  what  remains 
of  the  present  Lecture  I  will  endeavour  to  ascertain  what 
is  really  intended  by  those  who  attach  importance  to 
maintaining  the  truth  of  that  which  they  describe  by  this 
phrase. 

This  can  perhaps  most  conveniently  be  done  by  con- 
sidering certain  representative  accounts  of  the  Divine 
Nature  and  making  up  our  minds  how  far  God  as  described 
therein  can  be  considered  as  a  '  personal  God.' 

It  would  be  readily  admitted,  I  suppose,  on  all  hands 
that  the  God  of  Spinoza  is  not  a  '  personal  '  God.  But 
it  will  be  worth  while  to  spend  a  few  minutes  in  asking 
ourselves   what   it    is    in   the    Spinozistic    theology   that 

7  Where  the  unipersonaUty  of  God  is  suggested  at  all.  it  is  merely 
as  a  negative  to  the  doctrine  of  his  tripersonality.  Thus,  to  take 
examples  from  two  authors  belonging  to  two  very  different  epochs, 
we  find  the  heresiarch  Paul  of  Samosata  in  the  third  century  quoted 
as  saying  that  God  is  one  Person  and  his  Logos,  T-ponwirov  ey  -ov 
Qiov  a^a  rib  \dyw  ioq  uydpu)-oi'  tva  Kai  tov  aoToi)  \6yov  (Frag.  X.  I. 
See  Journal  of  Theological  Studies,  Oct.  1917,  pp.  37  ff).  And  in 
the  fourteenth  century  Durandus  a  Sancto  Porciano,  who  opposed 
the  view  common  in  his  day,  and  which  of  course  had  etymology 
upon  its  side,  that  persona  must  always  imply  a  relation,  observes 
that  if,  siciit  Gentiles  imaginantur,  there  be  not  a  Trinity  in  the 
Godhead,  then  God  would  be  a  person,  illi  natures  vere  competeret 
ratio  personcB  [in  Sent.  i.  dist-  23,  qu.  i,  §  13). 


PERSONALITY  AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD        69 

satisfies  us  of  this.  For  the  doctrine  of  the  great  Jewish 
thinker  may  stand  as  the  most  highly  developed  and 
therefore  most  adequately  representative  form  assumed 
by  one  widely  diffused  type  of  thought  concerning  the 
nature  of  the  Ultimate  Reality — that  type  of  thought 
which  may  be  conveniently  designated  by  the  popular 
if  ambiguous  name  of  Pantheism. 

No  doubt,  if  by  a  Divine  Person  one  were  compelled 
to  mean,  in  accordance  with  strict  historical  propriety, 
one  of  a  plurality  of  beings  within  the  Divine  Nature, 
the  God  of  Spinoza  could  not  be  called  '  a  Person,'  for 
by  God  Spinoza  undoubtedly  means  the  absolute  and  all- 
inclusive  Reality.  This,  however,  is  not  by  itself  enough 
to  show  that  Spinoza's  God  ought  not  to  be  called  personal. 
For  the  God  of  Catholic  Christianity  is  also,  as  we  have 
seen,  not  '  a  Divine  Person  '  and  it  would  seem  strange 
to  deny  that  the  God  of  Catholic  Christianity  is  personal, 
although  he  is  not  thought  of  as  one  Person  but  as  three. 
It  is  easy,  however,  to  discriminate  the  Spinozistic  con- 
ception of  God  in  this  respect  from  that  of  Catholic 
Christianity.  Spinoza  cannot,  indeed,  be  said  to  admit 
no  distinctions  in  God.  On  the  contrary  he  admits,  as 
is  well  known,  what  he  calls  '  Attributes  '  of  God,  in  each 
of  which,  just  as,  according  to  Catholic  Christianity,  in 
each  Person  of  the  Trinity,  the  whole  Divine  Nature  is 
expressed. 8  Of  these  only  two.  Thought  and  Extension, 
are  within  the  sphere  of  our  knowledge  ;  but  we  have 
no  reason  to  suppose  but  that  there  is  an  infinite  number 
of  others  besides. 9  But  the  relations  of  these  Attributes 
to  one  another  are  in  no  sense  personal  relations. 

8  See  esp.  the  decrees  of  the  Fourth  Lateran  Council,  c.  2  (Mansi 
xxii.  983).  Cp.  Turretinus  Inst.  Theol.  III.  27  §  i.  Unaqucsque 
persona  habet  totam  diuinitatem  ;  John  of  Damascus,  de  Fide,  iii.  6, 

9£/A.  i.  def.  6,  prop  10  ;  cp.  Ep.  66  and  see  Joachim,  Study  0/  the 
Ethics  of  Spinoza,  pp.  39  fif. 


70  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

However,  aa  we  have  seen,  the  expression  '  a  personal 
God  '  is  now  often  used  without  any  thought  of  iuhnitting 
a  plurahty  of  beings  within  the  Divine  Nature  standing 
to  one  another  in  personal  relations,  whether  after  the 
manner  of  polytheism,  wherein  they  are  thought  of  merely 
as  sharing  in  the  Divine  Nature  just  as  all  of  us  here  share 
in  the  human,  or  after  the  manner  of  Catholic  Christianity, 
in  which  the  mutual  unity  of  the  three  Divine  Persons 
is  of  course  regarded  as  of  an  infinitely  closer  and  more 
intimate  kind.  Wlien,  however,  the  expression  a  '  personal 
God  '  is  thus  used,  without  reference  to  any  plurality 
within  the  unity  of  the  Divine  Nature,  what  is  really  in 
the  minds  of  those  who  so  use  it  is,  I  think,  always  the 
possibility  of  personal  relations — of  worship,  trust,  love 
— between  oneself  and  God.  Now  here  again,  so  far 
from  Spinoza  denying  the  possibility  of  anything  of 
this  kind,  it  is  well  known  that  for  him  the  supreme  hai)pi- 
ness  of  man  is  amor  inteUcclualis  JJei,'^  the  love  of  God 
which  comes  of  knowledge.  But — and  here  is  the  crucial 
point  at  which  any  theology  which  is  concerned  to  ascribe 
personality  to  God  must  take  leave  of  Spinoza — it  is  abun- 
dantly clear  that  there  is  in  this  amor  intellechialis  Dei 
no  question  of  reciprocation.  According  to  Spinoza  God 
neither  "  first  loves  us  "  nor  does  he  return  our  love." 
And  it  is  just  this  impossibility  of  a  reciprocation  of  love 
which  makes  it — desjnte  the  religious  joy  and  peace 
which  we  cannot  for  an  instant  doubt  that  S])inoza  experi- 
enced in  his  contemplation  of  the  eternal  and  unchangeable 
nature  of  the  Universe — impossible  to  sj)eak  of  him  as 
teaching  the  personality  of  God.'« 

'"  Eth.  V.  prop.  33.  «'  Eth.  v.  prop.  19. 

'>  There  is  an  ironical  reference  to  the  theoloj/ical  use  ol  the  word 
in  Cogitata  Meluphysica,  ii.  8  §  i. 


PERSONALITY   AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD         71 

In  modern  times  it  has  become  usual  to  contrast  divine 
immanence  with  divine  transcendence.  We  shall  have 
occasion  at  a  later  stage  to  examine  this  antithesis  more 
closely  ;  but  at  present  I  um  content  to  refer  to  it  as  one 
familiar  to  all  who  are  acquainted  with  contemporary 
theological  literature. 

Now  it  might  seem,  fiom  what  has  just  been  said,  that 
it  is  because  Spinoza  regards  God  as  immanent  or  rather 
as  immanent  only,  that  he  cannot  allow  him  to  be  personal. 
x\s  to  this  suggestion,  since  we  are  still  in  this  Lecture 
deahng  with  the  history  rather  than  with  the  vahdity 
of  the  conceptions  under  discussion,  1  will  at  this  point 
only  make  the  following  observation.  There  are  views 
of  God  as  immanent  and  as  immanent  only,  for  which, 
although  they  would  probably  not  in  popular  discussion 
be  treated  as  affirmations  of  a  personal  God,  it  might  be 
easier  to  make  out  a  case  that  they  are  really  such.  I  am 
thinking  of  such  a  view  as  finds  expression  in  a  striking 
sentence  of  the  elder  Pliny,  Deus  est  mortali  adjuvure 
mortalem  '3  :  '  This  is  God  when  one  mortal  helps  another ' ; 
or  again  such  as  is  offered  to  u5  by  the  Religion  of  Humanity 
inaugurated  by  Auguste  Comte.  Here  it  is  in  personal 
relations — relations  of  persons  to  persons — and  in  such 
relations  only,  that  the  Divine  Nature  is  regarded  as  con- 
sisting. A  God  of  this  kind  it  is  hard  to  say  is  not  personal. 
Yet  most  people  would  be  inchned  to  hesitate.  Pliny 
indeed,  as  the  context  of  the  words  I  have  quoted  shows, 
meant  Httle  more  than  that,  since  there  was  nothing  more 
divine  than  a  man  who  helps  his  fellows,  a  '  saviour  of 
society  '  might  be  properly  regarded  as  a  God.  And  such 
a  deified  man  might  seem  to  be  beyond  question  a  personal 

'3  Hist.  Nat.  ii.  §  i8.     See  Prof.  Gilbert  Murray,  Four  Stages  of 
Greek   Religion,  p.    139. 


72  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

God.  But  the  phrase  used  taken  by  itself  may  suggest 
a  thought  for  which  one  might  find  a  still  better  expression 
in  more  familiar  words  :  "  God  is  love,  and  he  that  abideth 
in  love  abideth  in  God  and  God  in  him."  m  So  we  read 
in  the  New  Testament.  Here  it  is  plain  from  what  goes 
before  that  the  writer  is  thinking  of  the  mutual  love  which 
should  exist  between  the  members  of  the  Christian 
brotherhood,  and  which  he  does  not  hesitate  to  identify 
with  the  Divine  Nature.  Did  we  possess  this  passage  as 
a  fragment  only,  and  were  ignorant  of  other  aspects  of 
the  author's  religion,  we  might  suppose  that  we  had  to 
do  with  a  theology  for  which  God  was  merely  immanent. 
But  should  we  not  in  that  case  hesitate  to  describe  such 
a  theology  as  the  doctrine  of  a  '  personal  God  '  ?  And, 
when  we  turn  to  the  Great  Being  of  the  Comtist  faith,  we 
should  certainly  be  disposed  to  say  that  Humanity, 
though  consisting  wholly  of  persons  standing  to  one 
another  in  personal  relations,  is  not  itself  a  Person  with 
whom  oneself  or  any  other  human  being  can  be  in  personal 
relations.  One  is  only  in  personal  relations  with  some 
other  human  being  whom,"  in  relation  to  oneself,  one 
would  not  call  God.  According  to  the  language  of 
Catholic  Christianity  on  the  other  hand,  every  Person 
in  God  is  himself  God  ;  and  we  finite  persons,  who  are  not 
ourselves  God,  may  stand  in  personal  relations  with  these 
Divine  Persons.  Our  later  discussions  may  perhaps  lead 
us  to  doubt  whether  full  justice  has  been  done  to  the 
views  to  which  I  have  just  been  referring  in  the  account 
here  given  of  them.  But  I  have  been  intentionally 
describing  them  according  to  their  most  obvious  purport, 
in  order  to  show  that,  while  of  some  doctrines  which 
make  God  immanent  only  one  would  hesitate — as  one 
'4  I  John  iv.   i6. 


PERSONALITY  AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD        73 

would  not  in  the  case  of  Spinozism — to  say  that  they 
did  not  make  God  personal,  yet,  on  the  whole,  a  God 
consisting  of  persons,  each  of  whom  is  not  entitled  to  be 
called  God,  and  with  whom  as  a  whole  we  finite  persons 
cannot  stand  in  personal  relations,  is  not  what  is  generally 
called  a  personal  God. 

Thus,  on  the  whole,  we  should  not  speak  of  a  personal 
God,  unless  we  supposed  that  we  could  stand  in  personal 
relations  with  him.  And  for  those  who  conceive  God  as 
merely  immanent,  this  would  be  impossible.  But  so  it 
would  be  also  for  some  who  do  not  conceive  God  as 
immanent  at  all.  This  we  may  illustrate  from  the  theology 
of  Aristotle.  If  one  meant  by  calling  God  personal  no 
more  than  to  ascribe  to  God  a  self-conscious  individuality, 
we  should  certainly  have  to  call  the  God  of  Aristotle  a 
personal  God.  And  yet  I  think  that  no  one  who  is  famiUar 
with  Aristotle's  theology  will  deny  that  to  do  so  would 
be  to  give  a  very  misleading  description  of  his  teaching. 
Between  the  religion  of  Aristotle  and  that  of  Spinoza 
there  is  a  close  kinship.  In  both  it  is  the  splendid  flower 
of  a  pure  passion  for  knowledge,  and  in  both  it  has  nothing 
to  do  with  relations  between  persons,  such  as  the  mutual 
love  in  which  the  New  Testament  writer  whom  I  lately 
quoted  finds  the  very  essence  of  God.  And  so,  though 
in  a  certain  sense  their  theologies  are  diametrically  opposed, 
that  of  the  ancient  thinker  being  an  extreme  doctrine  of 
transcendence,  and  that  of  the  modern  an  extreme  doctrine 
of  immanence,  they  are  alike  in  this,  that  both  may  be 
said  utterly  to  exclude  such  a  possibility  of  personal 
communion  between  God  and  his  worshippers  as  the 
expression  '  a  personal  God  '  at  once  suggests.  Both 
philosophers,  indeed,  speak  of  a  '  love  of  God.'  By  this 
expression  Aristotle  means  not  so  much  a  conscious  emo- 


74  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

tion  (though  man  may  doubtless  be  conscious  of  it  in  him- 
self) as  an  instinctive  movement  by  which  everything  in  the 
universe  which  is  not  the  supreme  good  is  drawn  towards 
it,  as  a  lover  towards  his  beloved  ;  for  Spinoza  it  is  indeed 
a  personal  activity  of  thought,  amor  intellectualis  Dei  ;  but 
by  both  philosophers  alike  the  possibility  of  reciprocation 
on  the  part  of  God  is  entirely  excluded.  That  this  is 
expressly  explained  by  Spinoza  I  have  already  observed  ; 
and,  so  far  as  regards  Aristotle,  the  only  activity  which 
he  held  to  be  attributable  to  a  being  perfect  and  in  need 
of  nothing  beyond  himself,  such  as  he  conceived  God 
to  be,  was  the  activity  of  knowledge  ;  and  the  only  object 
which,  according  to  him,  was  not  unworthy  of  God's  know- 
ledge was  his  own  eternally  perfect  nature.  The  God 
of  Aristotle  is  not,  indeed,  like  Spinoza's,  an  immanent 
God.  For  Spinoza  our  understanding  or  knowledge  of 
God  is  a  part  of  God's  infinite  understanding  or  knowledge 
of  himself,  and  our  intellectual  love  of  him  a  part  of  the 
infinite  love  wherewith  God  loves  himself. ^5  Thus  he 
can  even  speak  of  a  love  of  God  for  us,  although  this  does 
not  mean  something  other  than  our  love  for  God.  It 
is  a  part  of  God's  love  for  himself.  This  includes  what 
can  be  called  in  a  sense  a  love  for  us,  since  our  minds  and 
the  thoughts  which  constitute  them,  so  far  as  we  think 
clearly  and  thoroughly,  are  parts  of  that  one  eternal 
system  of  thought  which  is,  in  Spinoza's  language,  God 
viewed  under  the  attribute  of  Thought  ;  just  as  our 
bodies  aie  parts  of  that  eternal  system  of  mattei  in  motion 
which  is  God  viewed  under  the  attribute  of  Extension. 
The  love  of  God  for  us,  thus  understood,  is  no  reciproca- 
tion of  our  love  for  him,  and  so  does  not  warrant  us  in 
describing  the  relation  between  us  and  God  as  a  personal 
relation. 

»5  Eth.  ii.  prop,  ii,  v.  prop.  36. 


PERSONALITY  AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD        75 

But  Aristotle  does  not  and  could  not  speak  of  a  love 
of  God  for  us  in  any  sense.  God,  according  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  Aristotle's  theology,  can  know  and  love  nothing 
less  than  himself,  and  his  being  does  not,  like  that  of 
Spinoza's  God,  include  our  being  within  itself.  He  is 
utterly  transcendent,  and  beyond  the  reach  of  personal 
communion.  It  is  very  instructive  to  study  the  modi- 
fications which  Aristotle's  faithful  follower,  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  has  to  introduce  into  his  master's  notion  of  God, 
in  order  to  make  room  for  the  providence  of  God  for  man 
and  the  communion  of  man  with  God  which  his  religious 
faith  and  religious  experience  demanded. ^^ 

Thus,  though  Aristotle's  theology  is  an  extreme  doctrine 
of  transcendence,  while  Spinoza's  is  an  extreme  doctrine 
of  immanence,  neither  is  a  doctrine  of  a  personal  God  ; 
and  this  agreement  between  them  is  closely  connected 
with  that  likeness  between  the  rehgious  temperaments, 
if  I  may  so  speak,  of  the  two  philosophers  which  strikes 
at  once  those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  writings  of 
both. 

No  doubt  it  would  be  possible  to  stand  in  genuine 
personal  relations  with  such  a  '  saviour  of  society  '  as  those 
whom  Pliny,  in  the  passage  to  which  I  referred  earlier 
in  this  Lecture,  and  other  Romans  of  his  age  were  ready 
to  salute  with  the  title  of  God,  as  one  reserved  for  them 
after  they  were  dead,  and  sometimes  even  as  earned 
already  in  their  Ufetime.^7  But  plainly  it  would  be  out 
of  the  question  for  these  personal  relations  to  be  at  all 
intimate  except  for  a  very  few,  and  even  for  them  they 
would  only  exist  during  the  term  of  the  natural  life  of 

»6  See  Siimma  c.  Gentiles,  i.  44  seqq.  ;  Summa  Theol.  p.  I.  qu.  14 
cp.  Studies  in  the  History  of  Natural  Theology,  p.  246. 
'7  Cp.  W.  Warde  Fowler,  Roman  Ideas  of  Deity,  c.  5. 

F 


76  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

their  object.  Nor  probably  was  it  in  the  design  of  those 
who  at  various  times  have  inaugurated  or  promoted  the 
deification  and  worship  of  men  who  "  exercise  authority 
and  are  called  benefactors  "  ^^  that  the  devotion  which 
was  to  find  expression  in  it  should  have  much  or  anything 
to  do  with  the  deeper  emotions  of  the  worshipper's  personal 
hfe.  A  '  god  '  of  this  kind,  although  certainly  a  person, 
is  not  the  kind  of  God  to  satisfy  those  among  ourselves 
who  would  most  earnestly  proclaim  their  need  of  a  *  per- 
sonal God.'  For  not  only  would  he  probably  seem  to  them 
unworthy  to  be  called  God  at  all,  but  he  would  have  too 
sUght  and  external  a  connexion  with  the  personal  life 
of  his  worshippers  to  meet  the  demand  which  a  '  personal 
God  '  is  supposed  alone  capable  of  supplying. 

We  turn  to  the  claim  to  be  considered  as  a  personal 
God  of  such  a  deified  hero,  when  conceived  as  after  his 
death  raised  above  the  vicissitudes  of  mortal  life,  hence- 
forth to  be  related  to  his  fellowmen  no  otherwise  than  as 
the  recipient  of  theii  worship.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  I  am  not  now  speaking  of  a  sage  or  prophet  or  founder 
of  a  religious  community,  whom  his  followers  honour  as 
a  God,  but  only  of  the  ruler,  the  conqueror,  or  the  pioneer 
of  civilization,  who  is  reverenced  in  gratitude  for  external 
benefits  which  he  is  understood  to  have  conferred,  upon 
posterity.  If  the  departed  giver  of  these  good  gifts  is 
realized  in  any  fullness  by  the  imagination,  he  will  enter 
the  company  to  which  the  gods  of  the  various  pagan 
mythologies  belong  ;  although  we  may  not  share  the  belief 
of  Euhemerus  that  these  were  all  originally  real  men  who 
had  been  deified  after  their  death. 

No  other  nation  known  to  us  has  placed  at  the  service 
of  religion  for  the  construction  of  such  a  mythology  so 
'^  Luke  xxii.  25. 


PERSONALITY   AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD         77 

powerful  a  creative  imagination  linked  with  so  sound  an 
understanding  and  so  fine  a  sense  of  form  and  beauty 
as  have  found  expression  in  the  poetry  and  sculpture  of 
the  ancient  Greeks.  Thus  it  is  from  a  consideration 
of  the  Gods  of  Greece  that  we  shall  best  learn  whatever 
a  mythology  may  have  to  teach  us  respecting  the  meaning 
of  Personality  as  applied  to  an  object  of  worship. 

Now  the  contrast  between  two  types  of  God  acknow- 
ledged by  the  Greeks,  that  of  the  '  mystery  God  '  repre- 
sented by  Dionysus  and  that  of  the  Olympian  represented 
by  Apollo,  is  familiar  to  modern  students  of  classical 
antiquity.  Already  recognized  by  Hegel,  ^9  it  has  more 
recently  been  made  by  Nietzsche,  in  his  essay  on  The 
Birth  of  Tragedy,  the  basis  of  a  whole  philosophy  of  art. 
A  very  few  words  will  serve  to  explain  the  nature  of 
this  contrast  sufficiently  for  our  present  purpose.  The 
'  Olympian  Gods  '  are  described  in  the  well-known  words 
of  Coleridge  ^^  as  "  the  intelligible  forms  of  ancient  poets, 
the  fair  humanities  of  old  religion."  They  are  human 
forms  of  superhuman  beauty  and  majesty,  revealed 
through  the  sculptor's  or  the  poet's  art  to  the  admiring 
contemplation  of  their  worshippers  but  abiding  them- 
selves in  their  glorified  existence  above  the  "  smoke  and 
stir  "31  of  mortal  hfe.  On  the  other  hand,  the  '  mystery 
God  '  is  human  rather  as  an  influence  intimately  felt  in 
the  emotional  fellowship  of  an  initiated  company,  who 
are  swayed  and  rapt  out  of  their  separate  everyday  selves 
by  a  common  enthusiasm,  in  which  they  put  on  the  attri- 
butes of  the  divinity  who  inspires  them  and  perform  in 
their  own  persons  superhuman  acts — as  when  the  Bacchae 
of  Euripides  rend  asunder  the  cattle  upon  the  hills  in 

'9  Phdnomenologie  d    Ceistes  E  b  [Wcrke,  ii.  pp.  522  ff). 
"  Piccolomini,  ii.  4.  »'  Milton,    Comus   5. 


78  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

their  frenzy. 22  The  'mystery  God,'  though  not  incapable 
of  apparition  as  a  glorified  man  or  of  representation  by 
an  image  in  human  shape,  yet  makes  his  presence  more 
characteristically  known  in  the  sacramental  food  or  drink — 
Dionysus,  for  instance,  in  the  fruit  of  the  "grief-assuaging 
vine  "  ^3  by  participation  in  which  his  worshippers  are  made 
one  with  him — in  the  sacred  plant  or  animal,  or  again 
in  the  celebrants  of  his  mysteries,  who,  as  they  accom- 
plish his  rites,  are  changed  from  their  own  likeness  into  his. 

I  am  not  here  concerned  to  examine  this  contrast  of 
the  Olympian  and  the  mystery  God,  or  to  inquire  how  far 
it  is  actually  illustrated  by  the  history  of  Greek  religion. 
It  is  enough  to  say  that  we  certainly  find  in  Greece  and 
elsewhere  the  two  distinct  attitudes  towards  the  object 
of  religious  worship  to  which  we  hav^  just  called  attention, 
and  to  point  out  that  the  consideration  of  the  difference 
between  them  is  instructive  in  regard  to  the  meaning  of 
the  demand  often  made  in  the  interest  of  Religion  that  it 
should  be  directed  towards  a  '  personal  God.' 

For  we  can  scarcely  fail  to  observe  that,  while  the 
Olympian  God  seems  to  be  regarded  as  possessing  '  per- 
sonality '  in  himself  more  properly  than  the  '  mystery 
God,'  just  because  of  his  remoteness  and  distinctness  from 
his  worshippers,  it  is  rather  the  '  mystery  God '  the  re- 
lations of  the  worshippers  to  whom  possess  that  intensity 
of  warmth  which  makes  us  ready  to  describe  their  religion 
as  '  personal  rehgion.'  His  personal  relation  to  them 
is  all  the  closer  in  that  he  is  not,  like  the  '  Olympian,' 
distinct  from  them  ;  because  in  the  communion  of  his 
holy  things  they  become  one  with  him  and  he  with  them. 


»*  Euripides,  Bacchcs,  735  seqq. 

»3  Tt}v  iravaiXvKov  afiirtXov.  Eur.  Bacch.  772.     The  English  epithet 
is  that  in  Professor  Murray's  translation. 


PERSONALITY   AS    APPLIED   TO   GOD         79 

Now  whatever  the  origin  of  an  Olympian  God  may 
have  been,  he  has  already,  as  Olympian,  ceased  to  be  a 
purely  tribal  deity.  Whatever  the  special  claim  which 
a  particular  city  or  family  may  have  upon  him,  he  is 
thought  of  as  a  power  belonging  to  all  mankind,  so  that 
it  is  natural  to  identify  with  him  any  God,  even  though 
he  be  the  God  of  a  quite  alien  people,  to  whom  like  functions 
are  attributed.  The  very  fullness  with  which  the  per- 
sonality of  the  Olympian  God  is  imagined  tends  to  make 
personal  sympathy  and,  still  more,  personal  intimacy 
out  of  the  question  between  the  worshipper  and  such  a 
different  kind  of  person  from  himself  as  the  God  he 
worships.  The  revolt  of  Euripides  against  the  inhumanity 
of  these  Gods  of  his  people  was  the  direct  consequence 
of  the  full  humanity  with  which  the  poetical  imagination 
of  that  people  had  invested  them  ;  for  it  was  this  that 
made  it  possible  to  judge  of  the  deeds  related  of  them  in 
legends  handed  down  from  ancient  and  barbarous  times, 
as  though  they  were  the  actions  of  real  men,  to  which 
the  standards  of  a  more  civilized  age  could  be  plausibly 
applied.  The  like  treatment  could  not  have  been  meted 
out,  for  instance,  to  beings  without  a  definite  human 
personality,  such  as  were  the  divinities  of  the  Roman 
State  before  the  Latin  poets  had  identified  them  with  the 
Gods  of  Greece  and  told  of  them  the  stories  previously 
attached  to  the  names  of  the  personages  of  Hellenic 
mythology. 

Thus  we  see  that  faith  in  a  '  personal  '  God  is  not  (as 
is  sometimes  hinted)  merely  another  name  for  anthropo- 
morphism in  theology  ;  for  a  thorough-going  anthropo- 
morphism may  have  the  effect  of  removing  the  God  thus 
conceived  far  from  the  possibility  of  exhibiting  the  personal 
sympathy  and  attracting  the  personal  devotion  the  need 


80  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

of  which  makes  men  demand  a  '  personal  God  '  to  worship. 
The  Epicurean  Gods,  splendid  beings  dwelling  in  the 
intermundane  spaces,  the  effluxes  from  whose  majestic 
forms  strike  upon  our  senses  in  sleep,  who  care  nothing 
for  us,  know  nothing  of  us — these  Gods  are  the  direct 
descendants  of  the  Olympians.  The  only  worship  which 
could  be  directed  to  them  was  not  prayer,  for  in  no  sense 
do  they  control  our  destinies,  but  the  willing  tribute  of 
admiration  paid  to  beings  so  greatly  superior  to  ourselves. 
And,  however  far  we  may  rightly  rank  the  Aristotelian 
conception  of  Godhead  as  Perfect  Intelligence  above 
the  Epicurean  notion  of  it  as  a  pecuUarly  fortunate  and 
enduring  combination  of  atoms,  yet  the  only  reason  for 
worshipping  Aristotle's  God  would  be  of  the  same  kind 
as  might  be  alleged  for  worshipping  those  of  Epicurus 
— the  disinterested  admiration  of  what  is  supremely 
beautiful  and  excellent. 

We  may  apply  to  worship  paid  for  such  a  reason  those 
words  of  the  poet  : — 

The  worship  the  heart  lifts  above 

And  the  heavens  reject  not ; 
The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star. 

Of  the  night  for  the  morrow. 
The  devotion  to  something  afar 

From  the  sphere  of  our  sorrow.  ^4 

But  we  must  remember  that,  if  the  heavens  reject  it 
not,  it  is  because  they  know  nothing  of  it ;  though  certainly 
a  disinterested  worship  of  this  sort  proves  the  worshipper 
to  be  of  no  ignoble  spirit,  yet  it  is  not  what  those  have 
in  mind  who  insist  that  reUgion  at  its  best  demands  a 
'  personal  God.' 

If  we   turn    from   the   '  Olympians  '  to   the  '  mystery 
M  Shelley,  ♦  T0  -  "  —.•'     ("  One  word  is  too  often  profaned.") 


PERSONALITY  AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD        81 

Gods  '  we  find  indeed  that,  as  we  have  seen,  they  offer 
greater  opportunities  of  personal  religion,  just  because 
the  God  does  not  remain  so  remote  from  his  worshipper, 
but  also  that  there  is  present  in  this  kind  of  religion  an 
opposite  tendency,  which  may  be  said  to  be  present  also 
in  every  kind  of  mysticism,  a  tendency  to  lose  the  per- 
sonaUty  of  the  God  in  that  of  his  worshipper.  In  the 
language  of  the  popular  theological  antithesis  of  trans- 
cendence and  immanence  to  which  I  referred  above,  the 
Olympian  God  is  too  transcendent,  the  *  mystery  God  '  too 
immanent,  to  be  precisely  what  is  meant  by  a  '  personal 
God.' 

Where,  then,  shall  we  look  for  an  example  of  what  is 
really  meant  by  a  '  personal  God  '  ?  We  shall  plainly 
be  most  Ukely  to  do  so  with  good  hope  of  success  in  the 
one  historical  religion  of  which,  as  we  have  seen,  Personality 
in  God  (though  not,  until  quite  modern  times,  '  the 
Personahty  of  God  ')  has  been  a  recognized  tenet — that 
is  to  say,  in  Christianity.  I  think  it  must  be  admitted 
that  here  it  has  been  found  easier  than  elsewhere  to  secure 
what  may  be  called  a  '  personal  religion  '  without  a 
mystical  dissipation  of  the  personality  of  its  Object 
and  to  attribute  personality  to  that  Object  without 
removing  it  to  a  distance  from  the  worshipper  too  great 
to  admit  of  genuine  sympathy  and  devotion. 

I  can  only  indicate  here  very  briefly  how  in  my  judg- 
ment this  result  has  been  obtained.  It  is  due,  as  I  take 
it,  in  the  first  place  to  the  fact  (for  a  fact  I  do  not  doubt 
it  to  be)  that  the  Christian  Church  has  worshipped  as 
God  a  real  historical  person,  of  whose  Ufe  and  character 
it  has  preserved  a  genuine  record ;  and  that,  as  presented 
in  this  record,  he  is  one  beyond  question  able  to  make 
upon  men  of  various  races  and  belonging  to  various  types 


W, 
-^ 
^ 


82  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

and  tenets  of  civilization  an  impression  of  moral  and 
spiritual  supremacy  so  united  with  an  extraordinary 
personal  charm  as  to  arouse  in  them  a  genuine  sentiment 
of  personal  love  and  devotion.  The  control  exercised  by 
the  record  upon  the  imagination  on  the  one  hand  has 
prevented  particular  groups  or  generations  of  Christ's 
followers  from  so  fashioning  or  refashioning  his  figure  in 
their  own  likeness  that  it  should  be  irretrievably  lost  to 
those  of  another  habit  or  temper  of  soul ;  and  on  the  other 
hand  the  conviction  of  real  objective  individuahty  which 
it  has  imposed  has  hindered  for  the  most  part,  even  among 
the  many  mystical  schools  which  have  from  time  to  time 
appeared  in  the  Christian  Church,  the  loss  of  all  sense 
of  his  distinctness  from  and  transcendence  of  the  souls 
which  he  has  notwithstanding  been  held  and  felt  to 
indwell. 

To  say  what  I  have  just  said  is  to  say  that  the  success 
of  Christianity  in  maintaining  a  doctrine  of  Divine  Per- 
sonality is  due  to  its  peculiar  doctrine  of  Divine  Incarna- 
tion ;  for,  though  there  are  many  doctrines  of  Divine 
Incarnation  beside  the  Christian,  it  will  be  found  to  be 
on  the  special  features  which  distinguish  the  Christian 
doctrine  from  others  that  the  characteristic  Christian 
view  of  Personality  in  God  depends  :  and  these  features 
are  recognizable  in  the  everyday  piety  of  Christians  as 
well  as  in  the  theology  of  the  Christian  schools.  In  con- 
tradistinction from  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  has  often,  no  doubt,  been  by 
unspeculative  Christians  rather  reverenced  as  a  sacred 
fornmla  than  felt  to  be  part  of  their  own  faith  as  indi- 
viduals. Yet  this  doctrine  has  also  been  instrumental  in 
assisting  the  sense  of  Divine  Personality  even  in  the 
religious  Ufe  of  ordinary  Christians  ;    for  it  has  enabled 


PERSONALITY   AS   APPLIED  TO   GOD        83 

the  personal  relation  between  Christ  and  the  God  whom 
he  called  his  Father,  with  which  the  Gospels  have  familiar- 
ized them,  to  be  regarded  as  a  relation  within  the  life  of 
God  himself,  yet  without  sanctioning  at  any  rate  the 
tendency  observable  in  most  doctrines  of  Divine  Personality 
— for  it  cannot  be  denied  that  this  tendency  has  at  times 
made  itself  felt  even  in  orthodox  Christian  Churches — 
to  introduce  into  the  Godhead  a  clash  of  moral  attributes 
fatal  to  that  whole-hearted  devotion  to  a  single  ideal  of 
life  which  monotheism  is  especially  concerned  and  qualified 
to  promote. 

But  although,  as  we  should  expect,  it  is  from  the  one 
historic  faith  which  has  insisted  on  the  importance  of 
affirming  the  presence  of  Personality  in  God  that  we  can 
best  learn  what  is  meant  by  a  *  personal  God,'  it  is,  of 
course,  as  we  have  already  indicated,  not  the  only  faith 
whose  adherents  would  usually  be  considered,  and  would 
in  some  cases  consider  themselves  to  be,  in  the  same  sense 
as  Christians,  worshipping  a  '  personal  God.'     I  am  now 
thinking  only  of  faiths  professed  by  civilized  men  to-day. 
Concerning   the    meaning  of    the   expression    as   applied 
in  these  I  will  venture  to  add  a  few  words,  although  I  am 
profoundly  sensible  how  difficult  it  is  to  feel  at  all  sure 
that  one  has  not  missed  the  significance  which  religious 
and  theological  language  may  bear  to  those  to  whose 
traditions   and   fellowship  one  is  oneself  a  stranger  ;    a 
difficulty  of  which  we  are  constantly  reminded  by  the 
mistakes  made  by  others  in  their  discussion   of  beliefs 
and  practices  with  which  any  of  us  chances  to  be  ac- 
quainted from  within.     Even  the  most  learned  student 
of   rehgions   other   than   his   own   must   experience   this 
difficulty  ;   and  I,  to  whom  Hebrew  and  Arabic,  Sanskrit 
and  PaU  are  unknown  tongues,  have  no  claim  to  be  called 


84  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

a  student  of  Judaism  or  Mohammedanism,  Hinduism  or 
Buddhism.  I  do  not  indeed  suppose  that  it  is  necessary, 
in  order  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  a  reUgion,  that  .one 
should  be  able  to  read  its  Scriptures  and  its  doctors  in 
their  original  languages.  A  man  may  be  a  very  good 
Christian  without  Greek  or  Hebrew,  and  a  very  bad 
Christian  with  both.  But  for  the  merely  external  study 
of  a  religion  it  must  be  a  serious  disqualification  to  be 
constantly  driven  by  ignorance  of  the  idioms  used  by  its 
chief  interpreters  to  second-hand  sources  of  information 
concerning  it. 

The  religion  most  closely  akin  to  that  Catholic  Christi- 
anity to  which  my  recent  observations  referred  is,  no  doubt. 
Unitarian  Christianity.  Here  the  Personality  of  God 
(and  not  only  Personality  in  God)  is  certainly  held  and 
insisted  upon.  God  is  worshipped  as  the  Father  revealed 
by  Jesus,  and  the  attitude  of  Jesus  towards  God  is  taken 
as  the  great  example  of  true  religion.  God  is  thought 
of  as  a  Being  having  the  ethical  character  attributed 
to  him  by  the  tradition  of  Christendom,  to  a  share  in 
the  inheritance  of  which  Unitarian  Christianity  regards 
itself  as  possessing  a  legitimate  claim  ;  and  if  certain 
features  of  this  character — that,  for  instance,  of  an  extreme 
severity  to  sinners  which  does  not  shrink  from  their 
eternal  punishment — are  frankly  discarded,  it  is  held 
that  the  retention  of  these  is  inconsistent  with  the  main 
trend  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  and  with  the  general  im- 
pression made  upon  the  reader  of  the  Gospels  by  the  record 
of  his  life,  which  is  thought  of  as  the  grand  illustration 
of  the  type  of  life  acceptable  to  God.  We  are  not,  of  course, 
here  concerned  with  any  differences  between  Catholic 
and  Unitarian  Christianity  except  such  as  relate  to  the 
doctrine  of  Divine  Personahty.     In  respect  of  this  doctrine 


PERSONALITY  AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD        85 

we  see  that  both  conceive  of  God  as  a  Being  with  whom 
personal  relations  are  possible  :  but  that  for  Unitarian 
Christianity  such  relations  are  not  as  for  Catholic 
Christianity  rooted  in  a  like  relation  within  the  Godhead 
itself ;  and  the  historical  personality  of  Jesus  not  being 
itself  an  object  of  divine  worship,  the  control  which  the 
record  of  that  personality  exercises  in  Catholic  Christianity 
over  the  religious  imagination  is  only  exercised  indirectly 
in  so  far  as  the  thought  of  God  actually  present  to  the 
minds  of  Unitarian  Christians  is  one  inherited  from  pre- 
decessors who  with  less  qualification  or  hesitation  sought 
their  clue  to  the  divine  character  in  that  attributed  in 
Scripture  to  the  Founder  of  their  religion. 

In  the  next  place  one  naturally  thinks  of  Judaism, 
which  stands  in  the  direct  line  of  descent  from  the  religion 
out  of  which  Christianity  sprang,  and  with  which  it 
preserves  a  more  complete  and  obvious  continuity  than 
the  sister  creed.  Though  Jewish  theology  has  never,  I 
believe,  made  use  in  describing  God  of  any  word  exactly 
corresponding  to  Personality,  and  has  ever  offered  a 
resolute  opposition  to  the  Christian  doctrine  with  which 
the  term  as  employed  in  theology  was  at  first  associated, 
of  a  plurality  of  Persons  in  God,  few  would  hesitate  to 
describe  Judaism  as  a  religion  with  a  personal  God. 
Long  before  the  rise  of  Christianity  the  prophets  of  Israel 
had  succeeded  in  a  task  which  the  Greek  philosophers 
had  failed  to  accomplish,  or  indeed  had  scarcely  attempted. 
They  had  maintained  a  close  connection  between  the 
universal  and  spiritual  religion  to  which  they  had  attained 
and  the  religious  institutions  of  their  nation.  The  per- 
sonal relation  of  the  tribesman  to  his  tribal  God  was 
preserved  as  the  basis  of  piety  towards  the  one  God  of  all, 
who  had  chosen  one  family  out  of  all  the  families  of  the 


86  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

earth  to  be  his  prophet  to  the  rest.^s  This  piety,  in  which 
the  piety  of  Christianity  is  rooted,  is  the  treasure  of  Judaism. 
The  tendency  which  existed  at  one  time  among  the  Jews, 
a  tendency  of  which  Christian  theology  itself  is  to  a  great 
extent  an  outcome,  towards  a  doctrine  of  a  plurality  of 
persons  within  the  divine  nature,  met,  after  the  develop- 
ment of  Christianity  had  rendered  it  suspect,  with  re- 
pression, and  ultimately  with  extinction. ^^  Jhe  fear  of 
'  making  God  too  much  a  man,'  27  a  fear  stimulated  by 
aversion  to  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation, 
combined  with  the  influence  of  Aristotle  on  the  thought 
of  mediaeval  Jewish  thinkers,  such  as  Maimonides,  in 
emphasizing  the  distance  between  God  and  man,  may 
have  imposed  a  greater  restraint  upon  developments 
of  personal  religion,  which  in  Christianity  were  at  once 
encouraged  and  directed  by  the  ascription  of  Godhead 
to  its  historical  Founder.  But  it  would  be  absurd  to 
deny  that  a  religion  has  a  personal  God  which  has  ever 
taken  as  its  ideal  the  great  Lawgiver  to  whom  his  God 
'  spake  face  to  face  as  a  man  speaketh  unto  his  friend.'  28 
Of  Mohammedanism,  the  other  great  religion  of  the 
world  belonging  to  the  same  historical  group  as  Christi- 
anity and  Judaism,  I  take  it  that  one  might  more  reasonably 
hesitate  before  answering  the  question  whether  it  conceives 
God  as  personal  or  no.  It  is  certainly  true  that  anthropo- 
morphic language  is  used  of  the  God  of  Islam  and  that 

»5  Cp.  Problems  in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  pp.  208  foil. 

»^  See  Jewish  EncyclopcBdia,  s.v.  '  Elisha  ben  Abuyah';  Oesterley 
and  Box,  Religion  and  Worship  in  the  Synagogue,  c.  ix. 

»7  M.  Arnold,  Stanzas  in  Memory  of  the  Author  of  '  Obermann,' 
Nov.  1849  ;  of  Goethe  :  '  For  he  pursued  a  lonely  road,  His  eyes 
on  Nature's  plan,  Neither  made  man  too  much  a  God,  Nor  God 
too  much  a  man.' 

»8  Exod.  xxxiii.  ii. 


PERSONALITY   AS   APPLIED   TO   GOD         87 

in  the  teaching  of  the  Arabian  prophet  he  is  certainly 
not  conceived  pantheistically  or  as  immanent  in  his 
worshippers.  But  it  would  seem  that  the  tendency  of 
that  teaching  is  to  reduce  the  personal  relations  which 
can  exist  between  man  and  God  to  the  lowest  terms,  to 
those,  namely,  which  may  exist  between  a  slave  and  a 
master  of  absolutely  unlimited  power.  Still  this  is  a 
personal  relation,  and  on  the  whole  it  would  seem  best 
to  describe  the  God  of  Mohammedanism  as  a  personal  God, 
while  remembering  both  that  Personality  is  not  expressly 
reckoned  among  his  attributes  and  that,  when  the  Moslem 
aspires  after  a  more  intimate  kind  of  piety  than  his 
canonical  scriptures  suggest,  he  seems  to  pass  at  once  to 
a  pantheistic  mysticism  wherein  the  personal  distinction 
between  the  devotee  and  his  God  tends  to  disappear 
altogether.  But  in  speaking  at  all  of  Islam,  I  occupy 
the  room  of  the  unlearned  and  speak  subject  to  correction 
by  those  better  informed. 

Concerning  the  great  religious  systems  of  the  farther 
East  I  will  only  here  make  one  or  two  remarks  with 
an  apology  for  their  inevitable  superficiality.  It  would 
seem,  speaking  generally,  that  while  the  European 
mind  is  apt  to  associate  with  the  word  '  person ' 
and  its  derivatives  the  thought  not  only  of  distinct 
individuality  but  even  of  a  mutual  exclusiveness  be- 
tween persons — a  mutual  exclusiveness,  however,  which 
as  existing  between  God  and  his  worshipper  is  in  every 
profound  religious  experience  found  to  have  been  done 
away — by  Indian  thought  distinct  individuality  is  com- 
paratively little  emphasized.  Hence  to  the  European 
Indian  conceptions  of  the  Supreme  Being  seem  to  lack 
the  definite  personality  which  is  suggested  by  the  ordinary 
religious  language  of  Christians,  Jews,  or  Mohammedans 


88  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

about  God.  On  the  other  hand,  rehgious  emotion  or  medi- 
tation probably  plays  a  far  larger  part  in  Indian  life  than 
in  European  ;  and  this  is  certainly  personal  religion.  So 
that  if  we  may  say  that  the  God  of  much  Indian  worship 
is  not  what  we  should  usually  call  a  '  personal  God,'  we 
must  take  care  not  to  imply  by  this  that  the  Indian's 
religion  is  not  his  personal  concern,  for  nothing  could  be 
less  true.  Moreover  the  important  and  widely  prevalent 
type  of  Indian  piety  known  as  bhakti  is  admitted  to  be 
devotional  faith  in  a  personal  God  29 :  while  Buddhism, 
which  originally  perhaps  acknowledged  neither  God  nor 
soul,  has  produced  in  the  worship  of  Amitabha,  the 
'  Buddha  of  the  Boundless  Light,'  the  '  Lord  of  the 
Western  Paradise,'  a  form  of  piety  which  has  seemed 
to  some  scholars  too  similar  to  the  Christian  to  have 
originated  except  under  Christian  influence. 30 

With  these  observations  I  bring  the  historical  portion 
of  my  course  to  a  close,  hoping  that  it  may  have  pre- 
pared us  by  a  study  of  what  has  been  actually  meant  by 
Personality  when  applied  to  God  to  inquire  further  into 
the  reasons  for  so  applying  it,  to  discuss  the  difficulties 
which  beset  the  application,  and  to  form  a  judgment  as 
to  its  validity. 

Before  entering  on  this  inquiry,  however,  it  will  be 
desirable  to  endeavour,  b}''  asking  ourselves  how  we  should 
distinguish  Personality  from  certain  related  conceptions, 
to  make  as  clear  to  ourselves  as  is  possible  what  we  have 
in  mind  when  we  employ  the  word.  It  is  this  problem 
which  will  occupy  us  in  the  next  two  Lectures. 

^9  See  G.  A.  Grierson's  article  on  '  Bhakti-marga  '  in  Hastings' 
EncyclopcBdia  of  Religion  and  Ethics;  cp.  J.  N.  Farquhar,  The  Crown 
of  Hinduism,  p.  332. 

30  See  A.  Lloyd  in  Transactions  of  Congress  for  Hist,  of  Religion. 
Oxford,  1908,  vol.  i.  pp.  132  ff. 


LECTURE    IV 

PERSONALITY  AND  INDIVIDUALITY 

My  purpose  in  the  present  Lecture  is  not,  as  in  the  two 
preceding,  to  examine  the  past  history  of  the  word  Person, 
but  to  ascertain  the  meaning  which  it  now  bears  for  us 
by  trying  to  answer  the  question  how  we  should  distin- 
guish the  conception  for  which  it  stands  from  certain 
others  to  which  it  would  seem  to  be  closely  related.  With 
this  end  in  view  we  shall  find  it  convenient  to  orientate 
ourselves,  as  it  were,  by  taking  as  our  starting-point  a 
provisional  definition  ;  and  I  know  of  none  better  adapted 
to  this  purpose  than  that  old  one  attributed  to  Boethius, 
to  which  in  my  surve}^  of  the  word's  history  I  have  already 
so  often  referred  :  Persona  est  natiircB  rationahilis  individua 
substantia.  It  would  be  generally  allowed,  I  think,  that 
by  a  person  we  mean  a  rational  individual,  or,  if  we  prefer 
to  put  it  so,  a  concrete  individual  mind.  I  have  chosen 
this  latter  phrase  as  leaving  open  an  alternative  of  which 
many  would  embrace  one  side  and  many  the  other.  If 
we  think  that,  in  order  to  be  concrete — that  is,  to  exist 
upon  its  own  account  and  not  as  a  mere  characteristic 
or  attribute  of  something  so  existing — a  mind  must  be 
embodied,  then  we  shall  think  that  a  person  must  be  an 
embodied  mind  ;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  think  that  a 
mind  can  thus  exist  upon  its  own  account  unembodied 

89 


90  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

then  we  shall  think  that  a  person  need  not  have  a  body. 
Thus  those  who  are  persuaded  that  the  departed  after  the 
dissolution  of  their  bodies  continue  to  exercise  mental 
activities  undoubtedly  regard  these  discarnate  spirits  as 
persons,  and  as  the  same  persons  that  they  were  when 
we  knew  them  in  the  body. 

It  may,  indeed,  be  noted  here  in  passing  that  some  who 
have  believed  that  individual  souls  survive  the  dissolution 
of  the  body  have  held  that  a  disembodied  spirit  is  not  a 
complete  person,  so  that  only  when  soul  and  body  have 
been  reunited  at  the  resurrection  is  the  personality  to 
be  restored  which  was  suspended  at  death.  This  is,  for 
example,  the  view  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas. ^  Nevertheless 
it  would  probably  be  true  to  say  that  those  who  maintain 
this  view  think  oi  the  life  of  the  disembodied  soul  after 
death  as  a  personal  life  and  are  ready  (e.g.  in  their  invoca- 
tion of  the  saints)  to  address  them  as  persons. 

I  am  of  course  aware  that  to  some  the  very  admission 
of  the  possibility  that  a  mind,  personal  or  other,  could 
exist  apart  from  a  body  will  seem  to  involve  so  groundless 
and  improbable  an  assumption  as  to  put  any  one  who 
makes  it  out  of  court.  I  hope  in  the  second  series  of  these 
Gifford  Lectures  to  take  an  opportunity  of  describing 
more  fully  vay  attitude  towards  the  problem  of  the  relation 
of  Personality  to  what  may  be  variously  regarded  as  its 
physical  basis,  condition,  expression,  or  vehicle.  But  for 
the  present  I  shall  content  myself  with  the  following 
observations.  In  view  of  the  fact  that,  within  that  part 
of  our  experience  which  no  one  regards  as  illusory,  Per- 

'  See  Summ.  Theol.  I.  qu.  29,  art.  i  and  qu.  75  art.  4.  The 
Master  of  the  Sentences  (iii.  5  §  5)  held  that  the  disembodied 
soul  was  a  person  :  but  this  was  one  of  the  points  upon  which  his 
authority  was  not  generally  followed. 


PERSONALITY   AND   INDIVIDUALITY         91 

sonality  is  normally  associated  with  a  material  organism, 
we  are,  I  think,  bound  to  ask  ourselves  whether  there 
may  not  be  grounds  for  supposing  this  association  to  be 
necessary  in  every  case.  But  I  do  not  think  that  the 
grounds  which  may  be  alleged  in  support  of  this  supposition 
are  so  overwhelmingly  strong  as  to  make  the  counter- 
hypothesis  unworthy  of  consideration  by  reasonable 
men,  and  I  therefore  hold  myself  justified  in  adopting 
at  this  stage  a  description  or  provisional  definition  of 
Personality  which  leaves  the  question  open. 

A  person,  then,  is,  by  our  definition,  individual ;  but  it 
would  usually  be  held  that  not  all  individuals  are  persons. 
That  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  say  what  we  mean  by  an 
individual  will  not  be  disputed  by  any  one  who  recollects 
the  controversies  which  have  been  carried  on  in  the 
schools  of  philosophy  about  the  principium  individuationis, 
the  principle  of  individuality,  or  the  notorious  difficulty 
which  biologists  have  found  in  deciding  what  constitutes 
an  individual  organism.  The  remarks  which  I  am  about 
to  offer  for  your  consideration  have  no  aim  so  ambitious 
as  would  be  that  of  attempting  to  solve  these  celebrated 
problems.  They  will  do  little  more  than  indicate  some 
outstanding  facts  as  to  the  use  of  the  word  '  individual ' 
as  well  in  common  speech  as  by  philosophers,  especially 
in  relation  to  and  in  distinction  from  the  word  '  person.' 

'  Atom  '  and  '  individual '  represent  the  same  Greek 
word  ;  but  the  former  (when  used  with  any  strictness) 
is  usually  taken  to  imply  an  impossibility  of  physical, 
the  latter  an  impossibility  of  logical  division.  Thus  there 
is  nothing  in  the  traditional  way  of  using  the  word  '  indi- 
vidual '  which  is  inconsistent  with  admitting  that  an 
individual  may  be  composite  in  origin,  or  susceptible 
of  disruption  into   several  individuals  ;    but   these   then 


92  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

would  not  be  instances  of  the  original  individual,  they  would 
only  be  several  individuals,  whether  of  the  same  or  of 
any  other  kind  from  the  first,  taking  the  place  of  one 
which  had  ceased  to  exist.  Nor  is  there  anything  to 
prevent  an  individual  being  made  up  of  distinguishable 
individuals  of  a  different  kind — e.g.  an  individual  nation 
of  individual  men,  or  an  individual  organism  of  individual 
cells,  or  an  individual  river  of  individual  drops  o^  water. 

The  general  term  '  man  '  is  not  the  name  of  an  individual, 
because  there  are  many  men,  each  of  whom  is  a  man  ;  but 
*  Socrates '  is  the  name  of  an  individual  because  there 
are  not  and  cannot  be  in  this  way  several  Socrateses, 
each  of  whom  is  a  Socrates.  Of  course  there  may  be  several 
men  called  Socrates,  but  they  do  not  constitute  a  class 
characterized  by  participation  in  a  common  '  Socrateitas,' 
as  the  Latin  Schoolmen  said,  of  which  each  would  afford 
an  instance.  In  the  technical  language  of  elementary 
logic  it  is  only  equivocally  that  the  name  is  applied  at 
once  to  the  philosopher  and  to  the  ecclesiastical  historian. 

A  '  person '  is  by  our  definition  not  only  an  individual 
but  an  individual  substance.  That  is,  we  should  not  call 
anything  which  exists  only  as  an  attribute  of  something 
else  a  person,  in  the  sense  we  are  now  trying  to  fix.  No 
doubt  there  are  senses  of  the  word  '  person,'  and  those 
earlier  senses  than  the  one  we  are  studying,  in  which  it 
signifies  something  which  is  not  a  substance  but  an  acci- 
dent— for  example,  an  assumed  character  or  a  legal  quali- 
fication. But  in  the  sense  in  which  '  person  '  is  equated 
with  vTTotTTaffig  a  person  must  be  a  substance,  not  an  attri- 
bute, and  moreover  an  individual  substance.  For  a  per- 
sonal name,  such  as  Socrates,  is  not  the  name  of  a  kind 
of  substance,  whereof  there  may  be  many  instances,  but 
of   an   individual  substance   of  which   there  can  be  no 


PERSONALITY   AND   INDIVIDUALITY         93 

instances.  Here  a  certain  temptation  to  sophistry  offers 
itself,  which  we  shall  do  well  to  note  as  we  pass  and  so 
to  avoid  yielding  to  it.  '  Person  '  itself  (it  may  be  objected) 
is  after  all  a  common  term  ;  it  is  therefore  the  name  of 
a  kind  of  substance  and  applies  to  many  such  substances. 
I  am  a  person  as  I  am  a  man,  or  a  lecturer,  an  instance 
of  the  universal  '  person  '  of  which  every  one  of  my  hearers 
is  an  instance  too.  And  on  the  other  hand  a  man  or  a 
lecturer  no  less  than  a  person  must  be  an  individual 
substance.  Is  there  anything  to  distinguish  '  person ' 
in  this  respect  from  such  other  appellations  as  I  have 
mentioned  ?  I  am  of  course  assuming  that  by  '  person  ' 
we  mean  a  rational  individual  or  an  individual  mind.  If 
person  were  a  mere  synonym  for  '  human  being,'  of  course 
it  would  be  a  common  or  general  term  like  any  other,  but 
I  think  that  it  is  not  usually  employed  as  a  mere  sjmonym 
for  '  human  being,'  and  that  we  could  not  substitute 
it  for  this  latter  term  on  all  occasions,  but  only  in  certain 
special  contexts. 

Now  if  everything  real  is  individual,  and  if  every 
description  (as  distinct  from  a  mere  designation)  of  a 
thing  must  be  in  general  terms,  it  follows  that,  unless  we 
carefully  bear  this  in  mind,  we  shall  be  at  the  mercy  of  any 
sophist  who  says  either  that,  since  we  can  only  know  what 
is  real,  there  must  exist  an  individual  corresponding  to 
every  description  that  embodies  knowledge,  or  that, 
since  every  description  must  be  in  general  terms,  what  is 
described  must  always  be  what  logicians  call  a  '  universal.' 
The  former  type  of  sophism  has  been  so  often  discussed 
that  we  are  more  likely  to  be  on  our  guard  against  it  than 
against  its  fellow.  It  may  take  the  form  either  of  ascribing 
an  individual  existence  to  a  universal  in  abstraction  from 
its  particular  instances,  or   of  denying  to  the  universal 


94  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

the  common  nature  or  character  which  individuals  share, 
any  reality  except  as  a  name  on  our  lips  or  a  thought 
in  our  minds.  I  need  not  dwell  on  the  difficulties  into 
which  such  views  must  bring  us  ;  they  are  sufficiently 
indicated  by  a  reference  on  the  one  hand  to  the  celebrated 
argument  of  the  '  third  man  '  brought  in  antiquity  against 
a  crude  statement  of  the  Platonic  theory  of  Ideas  *  ;  and 
on  the  other  to  the  question  which  Plato  represents 
Parmenides  as  asking  of  the  young  Socrates  when  the 
latter  had  suggested  that  the  universal  was  perhaps  a 
notion  in  the  soul  :  '  Is  it  a  notion  of  nothing  ?  '  3 

But  the  fellow-sophism  to  this  is,  as  I  said,  less  familiar 
and  therefore  perhaps  more  dangerous.  I  will  therefore 
deal  with  it  at  somewhat  greater  length. 

Just  as  there  is  a  temptation  to  take  that  which  is  not 
individual  either  for  an  individual  or  for  a  figment,  so 
there  is  an  opposite  temptation  to  treat  that  which  is 
individual,  because  described  in  general  terms,  as  a  uni- 
versal. And  we  may  yield  to  this  temptation,  as  to  the 
one  before  mentioned,  in  two  distinct  ways.  We  may 
point  out  that  such  words  as  '  individual,'  '  person,'  '  self  ' 
and  so  forth  are  themselves  common  predicates  ;  that  as 
Socrates  and  Plato  are  alike  men,  the  one  no  more  or  no 
less  than  the  other,  so  they  are  both  alike  individuals 
and  persons  and  selves.  Thence  we  may  be  induced  to 
attempt  a  short  cut  to  idealism,  by  way  of  the  reflection 
that  the  object  of  knowledge  turns  out  on  inspection 
at  close  quarters  to  be  nothing  but  thoughts ;  since 
universals,  if  not  mere  thoughts  of  yours  or  mine,  at  least 
exist  as  such  only  in  the  medium  of  thought.  This  short 
cut  is  not  unfamiliar  to  students  of  philosophy — I  will 

a  See  Alex.  Aphrod.  on  Aristotle,  Metaph.  A.  990  b  15  segq. 
3  Plat.  Farm.  132B. 


PERSONALITY   AND   INDIVIDUALITY         95 

admit  that  I  once  thought  it  would  take  me  whither  I 
wanted  to  go — but  I  am  convinced  that  he  who  trusts 
himself  to  it  will  have  cause  to  remember  the  proverb 
'  More  haste  less  speed.'  This  is  one  form  of  our  sophism. 
The  other  is  this  :  We  ask  what  seems  more  undeniably 
real,  substantial,  impenetrable  than  the  individual,  and  in 
particular  than  the  individual  that  each  of  us  knows  most 
intimately,  I  myself.  Yet  you  call  yourself  /  as  justly 
as  /  do  ;  self  means  you  just  as  well  as  me  :  and  in  the 
end  '  self '  will  turn  out  to  me  a  mere  appearance,  like 
the  gleam  upon  the  water  or  the  rainbow's  end  which 
shifts  "  for  ever  and  for  ever  when  "  we  "  move,"  4  so 
that  we  can  never  come  up  with  it  and  grasp  the  bright 
thing  which  to  a  child's  inexperienced  eyes  it  seems  so 
easy  to  suppose  that  we  shall  reach,  if  we  do  but  walk 
steadily  forward  in  a  certain  direction. 

It  is  no  part  of  my  intention  in  these  remarks,  as  some 
of  my  hearers  may  perhaps  suspect,  to  suggest  that  there 
is  some  being  inaccessible  to  thought ;  still  less  that  in 
such  an  impenetrable  shrine  is  concealed  what  is  of  highest 
and  most  enduring  worth.  Such  a  view  would  be  entirely 
alien  to  my  own  way  of  thinking.  However  imperfect 
what  we  call  our  knowledge  may  be,  I  should  contend 
that  it  is,  so  far  as  it  goes,  an  apprehension  of  ReaUty  ; 
not  merely  an  apprehension  of  something  with  which 
Reality  puts  us  off,  as  it  were,  while  remaining  in  itself 
inaccessible  to  us.  No  doubt  we  may  often  find  ourselves 
in  presence  of  something  which  we  cannot  describe,  because 
the  description  of  it  would  exceed  our  actual  powers  of 
comprehension  and  expression  ;  but  the  mere  fact  that 
we    can    say   nothing    about    a   thing    does   not   for    me 

4  Tennyson    Ulysses. 


96  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

imply  that  it  passes  all  understanding  ;    it  may  be  only 
that  there  is  nothing  about  it  to  say. 

It  was  not,  then,  because  I  wished  to  insinuate  a  doctrine 
of  the  Unknowable  that  I  spoke  of  the  necessity  of  guarding 
against  the  sophism  which  would  turn  the  individual 
into  a  universal  no  less  than  against  that  other  sophism, 
with  the  exposure  of  which  we  are  all  familiar,  which  turns 
the  universal  into  an  individual.  It  was  rather  because 
I  desired  to  insist  that  reality  is  throughout  individual 
and  universal  ;  not  in  part  one  and  in  part  the  other  ; 
but  both  alike  throughout  and  at  every  point.  In  words 
of  Goethe  which  Kegel  quotes  to  emphasize  this  truth  : — 

Natur  hat  weder  Kern  noch  Schale, 
Alles  ist  sie  mit  einem  male. 

Nature  has  neither  kernel  nor  shell, 

She  is  all  at  once  one  and  the  other  as  well  !  5 

Everything  that  is  real,  then,  is  unique,  this  thing  and 
no  other.  But  just  because  it  is  thus  unique,  it  fills  a  place 
of  its  own  in  a  system  of  Reality  in  which  it  has  its  being  ; 
it  is  describable  by  way  of  relation  to  and  distinction  from 
other  things,  other  elements  in  that  Reality  :  so  that  a 
full  description  of  it  would  state  its  relation  to  and  its' 
distinction  from  every  other  such  element  or  part  of  the 
whole.  This  double  aspect  which  belongs  to  all  that  is 
real  is  manifested  most  conspicuously  and  unmistakably 
in  persons.  The  person,  the  rational  individual,  is  not 
only  recognized  by  others,  but  recognizes  himself  as  unique 
and  individual,  just  because  he  is  aware  of  something 
beyond  himself,  however  vaguely  conceived,  a  background 
against  which  he  himself  is,  as  it  were,  set  alongside  with 

5  Goethe,  Gott  und  Welt  {Juhildums  Ausgabe,  ii.  p.  259).  Quoted 
by  Hegel,  IVerhe,  vi.  p.  276. 


PERSONALITY  AND   INDIVIDUALITY         97 

what  is  not  himself ;  an  encompassing  world  within  which 
he  and  other  things  from  which  he  distinguishes  himself 
are  alike  included.  This  background  or  encompassing 
world  is  potentially  infinite  since,  however  we  may 
attempt  to  envisage  or  picture  or  describe  it,  as  soon 
as  it  is  thus  envisaged  or  pictured  or  described  it  is  at 
once  found  to  be  itself  embraced  within  something  yet 
more  comprehensive,  and  so  on  for  ever.  We  may  see 
this  truth  illustrated  by  all  those  myths  of  the  origin  or 
creation  of  the  world  which  tell  of  a  transaction  requiring 
a  world  already  made  in  which  it  could  take  place,  and  so 
provoke  the  further  question.  Whence  came  the  beings 
or  things,  whatever  they  may  be,  which  are  represented 
as  taking  part  in  the  transaction  ?  a  question  which  in 
its  turn  leads  on  to  some  further  story  and  yet  further 
question,  in  a  series  to  which  only  the  exhaustion  of  the 
myth-maker's  fancy  can  set  a  period. 

At  this  point  a  question  of  some  importance  suggests 
itself  for  consideration.  When  we  say  that  the  double 
aspect  of  all  that  is  real  is  most  unmistakably  manifested 
in  persons,  which  are  individuals  conscious  of  themselves 
as  such,  is  this  because  the  individuaUty  of  persons  is  an 
individuality  more  perfect  than  that  of  individuals  which 
are  not  persons,  or  only  because  here  and  here  only  is 
there  revealed  to  us  who  are  persons  what  is  in  fact  the 
true  and  inward  nature  of  all  individuals  whatsoever  ? 

With  regard  to  this  question  I  shall  here  content  myself 
with  a  reference  to  the  doctrine  of  Leibnitz.  It  is  well 
known  that  in  the  view  of  this  philosopher  the  reality 
of  the  world  consists  in  an  infinite  multitude  of  '  monads  ' 
or  individual  substances  which,  as  he  picturesquely  put  it, 
"  have  no  windows  " — that  is  to  say,  admitted  no  influences 
from  without ;    so  that  all  that  is  done  by,  or  happens 


98  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

to,  any  monad  is  part  of  the  necessary  development  of 
its  own  nature  ;  although  among  all  these  coexistent 
lines  of  development  there  is  what  he  called  a  pre- 
established  harmony,  the  effects  of  which  we  are  apt  to 
mistake  for  the  effects  of  mutual  interaction  among  the 
monads.^  It  is  not,  however,  of  the  '  windowlessness  ' 
of  the  monads  or  of  their  '  pre-established  harmony ' 
that  I  wish  to  remind  you  now.  It  is  rather  of  the  fact 
that,  although  Leibnitz,  while  considering  all  souls  to  be 
monads,  did  not  consider  all  monads  to  be  entitled  to  the 
designation  of  souls,  yet  it  was  undoubtedly  the  personal 
soul  as  apprehended  by  itself  that  served  him  as  his 
starting-point  in  construing  the  nature  of  the  monads. 
That  there  could  be  beings  possessing  the  genuine  indi- 
viduality which  the  personal  soul  attributes  to  itself 
and  yet  not  exhibiting  that  consciousness  which  is  the 
characteristic  activity  of  the  personal  soul — this  became 
intelligible  to  him  by  means  of  the  experience  which  the 
soul  has  of  tlie  continuity  of  its  own  development  through 
and  across  periods  of  subconsciousness  and  unconsciousness, 
during  its  continuance  in  which  we  can  attribute  to  it 
no  activity  but  that  of  petites  perceptions  7  which  do  not 
rise,  in  the  metaphorical  phrase  familiar  to  us  in  modern 
psychology,  above  the  threshold  of  consciousness.  I 
think  we  may  borrow  from  Leibnitz  here  an  answer  to 
the  question  upon  which  I  have  just  touched.  What  the 
personal  soul  is  conscious  of  being  in  itself,  this  it  is 
conscious  of  being  because  it  is  it  to  a  certain  degree 
of  perfection  ;  were  other  individuals  this  to  the  same 
degree,  they  would  be  also  conscious  of  being  it,  and  so 
would  be  self-conscious  individuals  or  persons.  There 
is,  then,  a  genuine  identity  between  the  individuality  which 
'  See  his  Movadologie.      7  See  Nouv.  Ess.  ii.  i,  §  13.  Monadol.  §  21. 


PERSONALITY  AND   INDIVIDUALITY         99 

is  self-conscious  and  which  we  call  personal  and  that 
which  we,  who  are  persons,  recognize  in  other  things  to 
which  we  do  not  give  the  name  of  '  persons.'  It  is  that 
kind  of  identity  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  development 
or  evolution  ;  where  we  recognize  the  same  nature  or  type 
under  a  succession  or  series  of  forms  so  related  that  each 
exhibits  the  nature  or  type  in  question  more  adequately 
than  its  predecessor. 

Individuality  from  the  first  is  characterized  by  inde- 
pendence— relative  independence  at  least — of  other 
individuals  ;  but,  as  it  appears  to  us  in  things,  we  find 
ourselves  in  every  case  tempted  to  ask  whether  it  is  not 
something  which  we  are  attributing  to  them,  which  is 
defined  by  our  purposes  only,  and  which  another  spectator 
might  define  quite  otherwise.  We  desire  to  correct  our 
view  of  it  by  a  view  of  it  which  shall  be  the  thing's  own  ; 
but  this,  just  because  the  thing  is  not  conscious,  and 
therefore  has  no  view  of  itself,  we  cannot  do.  In  the 
case  of  organisms  which  we  should  not  dignify  by  the 
name  of  persons  we  find  something  more  like  what  we 
are  looking  for  ;  but  it  does  not  satisfy  us  ;  for,  as  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  mere  thing  seemed  to  need  in  order  to 
determine  it  a  mind  which  it  did  not  itself  possess,  so 
does  even  that  of  the  organism.  For  although  in  its 
action  and  (in  the  case  of  animals)  in  its  feeling  it  affords 
a  principle  of  determination  other  than  our  purposes,  it 
still  does  not  determine  itself  2ls  we  determine  our  own 
individuality  by  our  own  self-consciousness.  In  the 
case  of  a  person,  the  individual  may  be  said  to  determine 
himself  by  his  thought  of  himself.  If  even  here  the  principle 
which  has  guided  us  so  far  does  not  seem  to  be  completely 
realized  ;  if  we  are  liable  to  self-distractions  out  of  which 
we  can  only  imperfectly  recover  ourselves  by  the  effort 


100  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

of  self -consciousness  ;  if  our  power  of  grasping  in  thought 
what  we  are  seems  limited  on  the  one  side  by  physical 
conditions,  which  we  find  already  given,  and  on  the  other 
by  an  ideal  of  which  we  are  conscious  that  we  fall  short 
— all  this  is  only  to  say  that  such  '  personality '  as  ours  is 
not  the  highest  form  of  individuality  possible,  although 
higher  than  any  we  attribute  to  beast  oi  plant  or  inanimate 
body.  Our  inquiries  have  brought  us  up  against  a  con- 
troversy intimately  connected  with  our  main  subject  in 
this  course  of  Lectures,  a  controversy  on  the  terminology 
of  which  I  have  already  commented,  but  the  further 
examination  of  which  I  expressly  postponed.  I  refer 
to  the  difference  between  Mr.  Bosanquet  and  Lotze  which 
is  expressed  by  the  former's  ascription  of  Individuality 
and  denial  of  Personality  to  the  Absolute,  as  contrasted 
with  the  assertion  of  the  latter  that  Personality  belongs 
unconditionally  only  to  the  Infinite.^ 

Let  me  before  going  further  take  note  of  an  historical 
circumstance  which  may  prove  of  some  use  to  us  as  a 
guide-post  in  the  mazes  of  the  inquiry  upon  which  we 
are  entering.  Most  readers  of  the  two  philosophers  1 
have  named,  Lotze  and  Mr.  Bosanquet,  if  suddenly  asked 
which  of  the  two  stood  nearer  in  this  matter  of  the  indi- 
viduality and  personality  of  the  Absolute  Reality  to  the 
position  of  historical  Christianity,  would  probably  reply 
without  hesitation  that  it  was  Lotze.  I  do  not  say  that 
we  may  not  ultimately  see  reason  to  endorse  this  opinion. 
But  at  first  sight  we  may  well  hesitate  to  do  so. 

For,  so  far  as  the  terminology  goes,  it  is  not  Lotze  but 
Mr,  Bosanquet  that  agrees  with  the  tradition  of  Christian 
theology  in  calling  God  an  individual  but  not  a  person  9  : 

8  See  above,  Lect.  I,  pp.  i8  f.  ;  II,  pp.  52  ff. 

9  The  agreement  of  Mr.  Bosanquet  with  the  traditional  theology 


PERSONALITY   AND   INDIVIDUALITY       101 

that  God  is  individual  in  the  logical  sense,  as  man  (for 
example)  is  not,  so  that  there  cannot  be  several  individuals 

of  Christendom  would  not  end  here,  if  we  were  able  to  assume  (as  I 
think  we  may)  his  agreement  with  Mr.  Bradley's  pronouncement 
{Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  528)  that  "  it  is  better,  on  the  whole, 
to  conclude  that  no  element  of  Reality  falls  outside  the  experience 
of  finite  centres,"  and  could  then  argue  that  the  supreme  experi- 
ence must  be  possessed  and  the  supreme  activity  of  thought  exer- 
cised by  persons  ;  since  certainly  no  '  centres  '  less  than  such  as 
(to  use  Mr.  Bradley's  expressions)  '  imply  '  or  '  entail  '  personal 
souls  can  be  supposed  capable  of  possessing  that  experience  or 
exercising  that  activity.  But  I  do  not  doubt  that  both  Mr.  Bradley 
and  Mr.  Bosanquet  would  reject  this  inference  from  their  premises. 
The  very  '  finitude  '  attributed  to  the  '  centres  '  outside  of  whose 
experience,  it  is  held,  no  element  of  Reality  can  fall  is  inconsistent 
with  attributing  to  them  such  possession  and  such  exercise.  The 
Absolute,  though  appearing  in  finite  centres,  and  probably  only 
there,  is  itself  neither  a  finite  centre  nor  an  aggregate  of  such  ;  for 
all  'finite  things'  as  Mr.  Bradley  says  {A.  and  R.  p.  529)  "  are  there 
transmuted  and  have  lost  their  individual  natures."  I  have 
thought  it  worth  while,  however,  just  to  mention  a  possible  misuse 
of  the  principles  of  these  two  philosophers  to  establish  a  position 
which  they  would  repudiate,  because  I  feel  that  nothing  in  their 
writings  presents  greater  difficulty  than  their  language  concerning 
an  '  experience  '  which,  though  it  is  the  supreme  Reality,  yet  belongs 
to  none  of  those  '  centres  of  experience  '  in  which  alone  it  is  described 
by  Mr.  Bradley,  usually  indeed  as  '  appearing,'  but  sometimes  as 
'  realized,'  as  though  it  were  not  infinitely  more  real  than  they. 
It  is  no  doubt  true  that  Mr.  Bradley,  at  any  rate,  often  insists  that 
the  appearance  of  the  Absolute  in  finite  centres  is  '  inexplicable  ' 
— a  phrase  which  suggests  not  merely  that  it  is  an  ultimate  feature 
of  Reality,  but  that  it  is  one  which  excites  our  surprise,  so  that 
we  do  not  rest  in  it  as  being  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world, 
but  desire  an  explanation  and  are  baffled  by  our  failure  to  find 
one.  Is  it  possible  that  in  their  anxiety  to  point  out  the  inadequacy 
of  our  religious  and  theological  phraseology  to  express  the  ultimate 
truth  of  things  (an  inadequacy  which  no  one  would  deny)  both 
Mr.  Bradley  and  Mr.  Bosanquet  have  done  less  than  justice  to 
the  contribution  made  towards  the  revelation  of  the  nature  of  the 
supreme  Reality  by  the  religious  experience  to  which  that  language 
owes  its  origin  ?  See  esp.  Mr.  Bradley's  Appearance  and  Reality, 
pp.  226,  527  ff.  ;  Truth  and  Reality,  pp.  349  fi.,  420  £f.  ;  and  Mr. 
Bosanquet's  Principle  of  Individuality,  pp.  303  ff.  ;  Value  and 
Destiny,  pp.  253  ff. 


102  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

who  are  all  alike  Gods  as  there  are  many  individuals  who 
are  all  alike  men  ;  as  also  in  the  sense  that  there  cannot 
be  said  to  be  any  act  of  his  in  which  only  a  part  of  him 
is  concerned — this  would  be  affirmed  by  any  accurate 
exponent  of  Christian  doctrine.  And,  as  we  saw  in  the 
third  Lecture,  the  personality  of  God  (as  distinct  from 
the  acknowledgment  of  persons  in  God)  is  affirmed  by 
no  Christian  creed  or  confession  of  faith  which  has  not 
so  far  departed  from  the  normal  type  as  to  abandon  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  Unity. 

No  doubt  Mr.  Bosanquet  and  Mr.  Bradley  also  have 
been  at  pains  to  make  clear  that  they  do  not  consider  the 
Absolute  to  be  another  name  for  God.^o  The  God  of 
rehgion,  they  say,  is  or  may  be  thought  of  as  standing 
in  a  personal  relation  to  his  worshipper  ;  and  they  would, 
1  think,  be  inclined  to  add  that  there  are  aspects  of 
Reality  which  of  couise  fall  within  the  Absolute  but  are 
ignored  by  religion  or,  if  not  ignored,  are  regarded  by  it 
as  antagonistic  to  God.  We  shall  have  to  return  to  the 
question  of  the  relation  of  these  two  conceptions,  God 
and  the  Absolute.  But  for  the  present  I  do  not  think 
it  affects  what  I  have  said  above  about  Mr.  Bosanquet's 
agreement  with  Christian  theology.  For  he  would  prob- 
ably be  quite  ready  to  concede  that  in  the  theologians' 
account  of  the  Trinity  in  Unity  we  have  less  a  description 
of  God  as  the  Christian  worshipper  conceives  him  in  the 
actual  practice  of  his  religion  than  a  description  of  a  philo- 
sophical speculation  (though  one  no  doubt  suggested  by 
the  history  of  religious  experience  within  the  Christian 
Church)  concerning  the  nature  of  the  Supreme  Reality 
or,  in  Mr.  Bosanquet's  own  terminology,  of  the  Absolute. 

"  See  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  445  ff.  ;   Truth  and 
Reality,  c  15  ;  Bosanquet,  Value  and  Destiny,  pp.  255  f. 


PERSONALITY   AND   INDIVIDUALITY       108 

What  is  it,  then,  we  may  ask  in  the  respective  views  of 
Lotze  and  of  Mr.  Bosanquet  which  causes  this  closer 
agreement  of  the  latter  than  of  the  former  with  the  tradi- 
tional theology  of  Christendom  to  strike  one  as  something 
which  one  would  not  have  expected  ?  The  answer  to 
this  question  will,  I  think,  throw  light  upon  that  con- 
ception of  Personality  the  application  of  which  to  God, 
the  Supreme  Reality,  we  have  proposed  to  ourselves  to 
discuss. 

For  this  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  ethical  implications 
of  this  conception  of  Personality  :  and  of  these  we  have 
not  as  yet  spoken,  except  incidentally. 

Now  in  the  first  place,  if  we  cast  back  our  thoughts 
to  that  history  of  the  word  person  which  I  traced  in  a 
previous  Lecture,  we  shall  see  that  the  original  associations 
of  the  word  were  with  the  performance  of  functions  in 
social  intercourse.  We  see  this  alike  in  the  case  of  the 
persons  in  a  drama  and  the  persons  at  law  who  are  the 
subjects  of  rights  and  duties.  We  do  not  wonder,  then, 
that  the  thought  of  Personality  cannot  easily  be  dis- 
connected from  that  of  social  conduct  or,  in  other  words, 
from  the  sphere  of  MoraUty. 

We  shall,  I  think,  bring  this  fact  home  to  ourselves 
if  we  raise  the  question  whether  a  self-conscious  indi- 
vidual supposed  to  stand  altogether  outside  that  sphere 
could  naturally  be  called  a  person.  Let  us  take  two 
instances  to  illustrate  what  I  mean  :  one  from  a  con- 
temporary novehst,  the  other  from  an  ancient  philosopher. 

The  adventurous  fancy  of  Mr.  Wells  has,  in  the 
'  Martians  '  of  his  romance  The  War  of  the  Worlds,  familiar- 
ized his  readers  with  the  picture  of  a  rational  and  scientific 
animal  who  is  imagined  as  sharing  the  intellectual  but 
not   the   moral   nature  of   mankind.     A   stranger   to   the 


104  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

desires  and  pleasures  of  sex  and  of  nutrition,  the  Martian 
is  equally  a  stranger  to  the  moral  emotions  which,  in  their 
simplest  and  most  universal  shape,  are  connected  with 
the  satisfaction  of  those  desires  and  the  enjoyment  of 
those  pleasures. 

Now  we  may  not  unreasonably  doubt  whether,  if  the 
Martians  were  wholly  without  morality,  they  could  have 
organized  the  invasion  of  this  planet  which  is  the  theme 
of  Mr.  Wells's  story.  That  there  must  be  '  honour  among 
thieves  '  if  they  are  to  form  successful  gangs,  is  the  familiar 
teaching  both  of  proverbial  philosophy  and  of  the 
Republic  of  Plato."  And  the  same  line  of  thought 
would  suggest  that  Mr.  Wells's  Martians  must  after  all 
have  had  at  least  those  rudiments  of  a  moral  sense  which 
were  necessary  to  ensure  their  efficient  co-operation. 

But,  however  this  may  be,  I  think  that  we  should  in 
speaking  of  one  of  the  Martians  as  described  by  Mr.  Wells 
hesitate  to  call  him — or  it — a  person.  For  with  such  a 
being  what  we  call  personal  relations  would  be  impossible 
for  us  ;  and  it  is  by  the  possibility  of  such  relations  that 
we  judge  of  the  presence  of  personality  in  others.  It 
is  just  what  constitutes  the  nightmare-Uke  ghastliness 
of  these  creatures  of  Mr.  Wells's  imagination  that  they 
have  some  of  the  attributes  we  associate  most  closely 
with  personality,  and  yet,  for  lack  of  that  moral  com- 
munity with  us  which  makes  personal  relations  possible 
are  not  really  persons.  The  horror  which  they  inspire 
is  an  intensified  degree  of  that  which  in  real  life  is  excited 
in  us  by  the  maniac  who  has  not  indeed,  like  the  fabled 
Martians,  the  intellectual  capacity  of  a  human  being,  but 
at  any  rate  presents  (as  they  do  not)  the  outward  form  of 
man,  and  yet  not  withal  the  opportunity  of  human  fellow- 
"  Plat.  Rep.  i.  351  c. 


PERSONALITY   AND   INDIVIDUALITY       105 

ship  which  that  form  seems  to  promise.  And  the  maniac 
it  would  certainly  seem  unnatural  to  describe,  except 
with  some  apology,  as  a  person. 

To  my  other — very  different — instance  of  a  self-conscious 
individual  who  is  thought  of  as  standing  outside  of  the 
sphere  of  morality  I  have  already  referred  in  an  earlier 
Lecture  "  ;  and  so  I  will  do  no  more  now  than  mention 
it.  It  is  God  as  described  by  Aristotle.  To  God,  according 
to  the  express  statements  of  that  philosopher,  ethical 
predicates  are  inapplicable.  He  enters  into  no  reciprocal 
relations  with  other  beings,  although  the  desire  to  attain 
to  his  supreme  excellence  is  the  cause  of  the  movement 
of  universal  nature  ;  for  he  himself,  by  reason  of  his  very 
perfection,  can  have  no  concern  with  or  knowledge  of 
anything  that  is  less  perfect  than  himself — and  all  things 
except  himself  are  that. 

We  saw  before  that  such  a  being  is  not  at  all  what  those 
who  attach  importance  to  the  recognition  of  a  '  personal 
God  '  are  thinking  of  when  they  use  that  phrase  :  for 
since  there  is  no  possibility  of  personal  relations  with  him, 
he  is  not  in  any  natural  sense  a  person,  any  more  than 
the  maniac  or  the  Martian.  The  denial  of  personality 
is  in  these  three  very  various  cases  based  upon  the  same 
negation  which  may  be  made  about  them  all,  namely 
that  they  are  outside  the  sphere  of  morality,  which  is 
the  sphere  of  personal  relations  ;  so  that  personal  rela- 
tions with  them  there  cannot  be  and  persons  they  cannot 
properly  be  called. 

Now    the    Absolute    of    Mr.    Bosanquet's    and    of    Mr 

Bradley's    philosophy    also     transcends     the    sphere    of 

Morahty,   although  in   a  somewhat   different   sense  from 

the  God  of  Aristotle.     For  in  the  view  of  Mr.  Bosanquet 

»»  See  above.  Lecture  III,  pp.  73  ff. 


106  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

and  Mr.  Bradley  the  moral  life  of  human  beings  and  of 
any  other  beings  (if  such  there  be)  who  progress  from  a 
more  imperfect  to  a  more  perfect  state  of  existence  under 
the  impulse  of  aspiration  after  an  ideal  which  is  not  yet 
realized,  does  not  fall  altogether  outside  of  the  Absolute 
Experience  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  wholly  comprehended 
within  it,  although  only  as  transmuted,  one  may  say, 
beyond  all  recognition.  For,  whereas  Morality  is  un- 
fulfilled aspiration,  we  have  here  satisfied  fruition. ^3  And 
whereas  Morality  involves  external  relations  to  other 
beings  to  whom  the  moral  person  owes  duties,  and  from 
whom  he  claims  rights,  there  is  nothing  beyond  the 
Absolute.  Thus  in  this  philosophy  the  Absolute  transcends 
the  sphere  of  Morality,  and  therefore  cannot  be  called 
a  Person. 

On  the  other  hand,  Lotze  does  not  deny  Personality 
to  the  Infinite  because  he  holds  that  what  we  are  com- 
pelled to  regard  as  the  highest  conceptions,  of  which 
conceptions  the  Good  (that  is,  the  morally  good)  is  one, 
lose  all  reality  and  become  empty  abstractions  except  as 
referred  to  a  Person  ;  while  to  him  the  description  of  the 
Supreme  Reality  as  a  "  Living  Love  that  wills  the  blessed- 
ness of  others,"  ^4  does  not,  as  to  the  English  thinkers 
with  whom  I  have  contrasted  him,  appear  inconsistent 
with  that  freedom  from  all  want  or  dependence  which 
must  belong  to  that  Supreme  Reality.  Rather,  so  he 
thinks,  it  satisfies  a  deep-seated  demand  in  our  nature 
to  find  that  what  has  supreme  reality  has  also  supreme 
value  ;  and  this  he  would  certainly  have  refused  to  find 
in  an  Absolute  like  Mr.  Bosanquet's,  our  conception  of 

'}  See  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  201  f.,  and  pp.  436  ff.; 
Bosanquet,    Value  and  Destiny,  pp.  138  ff. 

'■•  Microcosmus,  ix.  5  §  7,  Eng.  tr.  ii.  p.  721. 


PERSONALITY  AND   INDIVIDUALITY       107 

which  is  reached  by  the  appUcation  of  a  criteiion  the 
"  proper  name  "  of  which  is  non-contradiction. ^5  For  the 
present  we  will  bring  to  a  close  this  account  of  the  differ- 
ence between  Lotze  on  the  one  hand  and  Mr.  Bosanquet 
on  the  other  which  expi esses  itself  in  the  attribution  to 
the  Ultimate  Reality  of  Personality  by  the  former,  and 
by  the  latter  of  Individuality  but  not  of  Personality,  We 
have  compared  with  both  a  third  view,  namely,  that 
embodied  in  the  traditional  theology  of  Christendom. 
This  theology  agreed,  as  we  saw,  with  Mr.  Bosanqaet 
as  against  Lotze  in  affirming  individuality  but  not  per- 
sonality of  the  Supreme  Being  :  and  in  finding  Personality 
included  within  the  nature  of  the  Supreme  Being,  but  not 
predicable  of  it.  On  the  other  hand,  Lotze  is  at  one  with 
this  same  theology  in  his  teaching,  which  Mr.  Bosanquet 
would  be  unable  to  endorse  as  it  stands,  that  the  Supreme 
Being  is  a  "  Living  Love  that  wills  the  blessedness  of 
others,"  although  he  does  not  carry  his  agreement  so  far 
as  to  represent  this  will  to  bless  others  as  rooted  in  an 
eternal  activity  of  love  between  persons  who  are  not 
other  than  the  Supreme  Being,  because  their  distinction 
from  one  another  falls  within  its  unity,  and  yet  are  not 
(like  the  persons  who  in  Mr.  Bosanquet's  doctrine  also 
fall  within  the  unity  of  his  Absolute)  transitory  and 
finite  manifestations  of  an  eternal  and  infinite  Reality. 

On  the  problems  suggested  by  the  comparison  and 
contrast  of  these  views  there  remains  of  course  much  to 
be  said  :  and  I  hope  to  return  to  them  hereafter.  But 
what  I  have  said  will  perhaps  be  sufficient  for  our 
immediate    purpose,    which    was    only  to    illustrate    the 

'5  The  expression  occurs  in  a  review  by  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  Mind 
(October  191 7)  of  Prof.  Pringle-Pattison's  Idea  of  God.  See  Indi- 
viduality and  Value,  pp.  44  ff.  (cp.  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality, 
P-  537)- 


108  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

distinction    of    the    notion    of   personality    from    that    of 
individuality  and  the  relation  of  the  one  to  the  other. 

In  the  next  Lecture  I  shall  pass  to  the  distinction  of 
the  notion  of  personality  from  and  its  relation  to  another, 
to  which  as  well  as  to  individualitv,  of  which  we  have 
just  been  speaking,  reference  is  made  in  the  Bocthiaa 
definition  of  person,  namely  the  notion  of  rationality 


LECTURE   V 

PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY 

In  my  last  Lecture  I  took  as  a  provisional  definition  of 
Personality  the  celebrated  formula  found  in  the  Christo- 
logical  treatise  traditionally  attributed  to  Boethius : 
NaturcB  rationahilis  individua  substantia ;  and  I  en- 
deavoured to  give  some  account  of  the  relation  of  the 
notion  of  personality  to  that  of  individuality,  which  enters 
into  this  description  of  its  essential  nature.  I  now  desire 
to  fix  your  attention  upon  another  notion  which  also 
appears  in  the  same  description  as  an  element  in  Per- 
sonality, that  namely  of  reason  or  rationality .  As  we 
previously  inquired  in  what  respect  the  individuality  of 
a  rational  being  differs  from  that  of  any  other,  so  now  we 
will  attempt  to  discover  how  reason  is  modified  by  being 
manifested  in  a  personality.  But  I  do  not  desire  by  using 
this  expression  to  commit  myself  to  the  implication  that 
Reason  in  fact  exists  except  as  the  activity  of  personal 
minds. 

This  inquiry  will  lead  us  straight  to  that  part  of  our 
discussion  in  which  we  shall  be  concerned  with  the  motives 
that  can  be  alleged  for  and  the  objections  that  can  be 
brought  against  ascribing  Personality  to  God.  For  in 
examining  the  discrepancy  which  we  shall  presently  have 
to   consider  between   what,   as  rational  and  common  to 

109 


110  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

all  persons  or  rational  beings,  takes  no  account  of  the 
distinction  of  persons,  and  what  on  the  other  hand  dis- 
tinguishes one  person  or  rational  being  from  another,  we 
shall  find  ourselves  dealing  with  a  fact  which  is  the  princi- 
pal inspiration  at  once  of  the  demand  for  a  personal  God 
and  of  the  reluctance  of  many — especially  among  philo- 
sophers— to  admit  the  legitimacy  of  this  demand.  This 
I  will  describe  for  the  moment  by  a  name  which,  as  I  hope 
eventually  to  show,  is  in  truth  inappropriate,  but  which 
will  notwithstanding  serve  better  perhaps  than  any  other 
to  suggest  at  the  outset  the  problem  which  I  have  in  mind. 
I  will  call  it  '  the  irrationality  of  the  personal.' 

It  will,  I  think,  be  found  most  convenient  in  dealing 
with  this  subject  not  to  draw  any  hard  and  fast  line 
between  the  general  treatment  of  it  and  th§  special  investi- 
gation of  its  bearing  on  the  question  of  Divine  Personality, 
which  is  the  principal  topic  of  these  Lectures. 

It  will  not  be  denied  that  many  instances  may  be  given 
of  the  use  of  the  word  '  personal '  in  our  ordinary  speech 
— and  it  is  never  safe  for  the  philosopher  to  neglect  the 
testimony  of  ordinary  speech — to  express  what,  at  least 
in  contrast  with  something  else  to  which  in  the  context 
it  is  opposed,  we  regard  as  irrational.  Thus  we  may 
speak  of  a  '  personal  prejudice  '  which  prevents  a  man 
agreeing  to  some  plan  or  approving  of  some  appointment 
against  which  he  can  bring  forward  no  argument  based 
on  grounds  of  reason.  No  doubt  such  a  'personal  preju- 
dice '  is  always  susceptible  of  an  explanation  ;  it  may, 
for  example,  be  due  to  some  unpleasant  association,  some 
instinctive  physical  repugnance,  or  what  not  ;  but  we 
should  not  consider  these  to  be  in  the  proper  sense  reasons 
for  rejecting  the  plan  or  refusing  to  sanction  the  appoint- 
ment ;    though  they  may  be  the  causes  of  the  prejudiced 


PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY         111 

man's  acting  as  he  does.  On  the  other  hand,  we  might 
say  quite  naturally  that  it  was  a  reason  for  not  appointing 
So-and-so  to  a  certain  post  that  he  would  not  get  on  with 
some  colleague  who  had  a  personal  prejudice  against  him. 
But  the  reason  here  would  not  be  the  man's  who  had  the 
'  personal  prejudice,'  but  somebody  else's  who  was  taking 
that  prejudice  dispassionately  into  account. 

One  can  without  any  difficulty  find  many  similar 
instances  of  the  use  of  the  word  '  personal '  for  what  is, 
in  some  particular  connexion,  to  be  discounted  (like  the 
'  personal  equation  '  in  a  scientific  observation  or  experi- 
ment) before  a  result  can  be  attained  which  is  fit  to  form 
part  of  the  common  stock  of  experience  which  we  call 
science  in  the  widest  sense  of  this  word.  We  sometimes 
contrast  History  with  Science  as  dealing  with  individuals 
and  for  the  most  part  with  persons — while  science  is  con- 
cerned only  with  universals,  classes,  generalities,  and  so 
forth.  But  historians  are  constantly  attracted  by  the 
aim  of  making  History  scientific  and  so  adding  it  to  the 
common  store  of  which  I  have  just  spoken.  The  attempt 
to  do  this  necessarily  tends  towards  the  subordination 
of  the  personal  element  or  its  resolution  into  what  can 
be  represented  as  intelligible  from  principles  applicable 
to  any  person  under  the  circumstances  of  this  one.  Thus 
to  the  generalizing  reason,  which  is  the  very  breath  of 
what  we  call  Science,  Personality  is,  as  it  were,  a  surd ; 
it  can  at  best  be  represented  by  a  series  of  characteristics 
which  can  never  be  completed,  so  as  to  constitute  that  very 
person,  and  not  merely  a  person  of  just  that  kind. 

But  one  may  go  further.  Not  only  does  there  thus  seem 
to  be  something  in  Personality  which  refuses  to  be  rational- 
ized by  what  one  may  call  the  scientific  understanding 
with  its  method  of  generaUzation  ;    there  may  even  seem 


112  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

to  be  something  in  it  irrational  from  a  more  strictly  philo- 
sophical point  of  view.  In  my  first  Lecture,  when  I  was 
attempting  to  describe  the  circumstances  which  just  now 
specially  invited  to  an  investigation  of  the  notion  of 
Personality,  I  described  the  embarrassment  caused  by 
that  notion  to  the  philosophy  of  an  important  school  of 
thought,  which  in  recent  times  has  predominated  in  this 
country  ;  and  I  promised  that  the  true  reasons  of  this 
embarrassment  would  become  more  evident  at  a  later 
stage  of  our  discussion.  It  is  to  these  reasons  that  I 
desire  now  to  call  attention. 

It  was,  as  I  said  before,  the  peculiar  task  of  the  school 
in  question  to  expose  the  failure  of  the  empirical  philo- 
sophy which  it  found  in  possession  and  to  give  such  an 
account  of  the  human  mind  as  would  render  intelligible 
its  capacity  for  the  very  kind  of  knowledge  regarded  by 
that  philosophy  as  the  authentic  type  of  genuine  and 
valuable  knowledge — that  knowledge,  namely,  which  goes 
by  the  name  of  Natural  Science.  It  recalled  attention 
to  the  relations  or  principles  of  synthesis  which  Kant 
had  designated  as  '  forms  of  sensibility  '  and  '  categories 
of  the  understanding,'  and  showed  that,  apart  from  these 
relations  or  principles  of  synthesis,  the  objective  validity 
of  which,  since  the  knowledge  of  them  could  not  be 
traced  to  sense-perception,  the  empirical  philosophy 
could  not  consistently  amrm,  there  could  be  for  us  no 
nature  and  therefore  no  natural  science  at  all. 

To  recognize  this  was  to  acknowledge  a  unity  of  con- 
sciousness, a  '  spiritual  principle,'  as  Green  called  it, 
apart  from  the  presence  whereof  to  them  all  the  several 
sensations,  which  the  empirical  philosophers  had  held 
to  be  the  sole  constitutents  ot  our  experience,  would 
each  have  vanished  for  ever  before  another  came  and  so 


PERSONALITY   AND   RATIONALITY         113 

could  never  have  given  rise  to  the  perception  even  of  a 
single  object,  much  less  of  a  world  of  objects. 

There  is  more  than  one  problem  concerning  the  nature 
of  such  a  '  spiritual  principle  '  as  this  which  might  be 
raised.  But  there  is  only  one  which  I  now  desire  to  discuss. 
And  that  is  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  such  a  '  spiritual 
principle  '  as  Green,  for  example,  contended  that  we  must 
recognize  in  knowledge  to  what  we  call  personality. 

At  first  sight,  indeed,  it  might  seem  that  it  was  just  of 
our  personality  that  Green  was  speaking.  I  am  a  person, 
not  a  thing  nor  yet  an  animal ;  for  an  animal,  although 
conscious,  lacks  (as  we  suppose)  the  capacity  to  distinguish 
itself  as  a  permanent  consciousness  from  what  to  us  who 
observe  it  are  its  successive  sensations.  And  it  is  just 
because  I  am  thus  not  a  thing,  nor  merely  an  animal,  but 
a  person  that  I  am  aware  in  mj^self  of  this  enduring  self, 
which  has  sensations  but  is  not  any  one  of  them  nor  all 
of  them  together,  but  something  of  quite  another  nature 
than  theirs,  which  is  for  ever  establishing  for  itself  con- 
nexions between  sensations,  and  so  exhibiting  them  as 
factors  in  its  own  perception  of  an  enduring  world. 

But,  as  one  looks  closer,  it  is  plain  that  what  Green 
is  thinking  of  is  not  personahty  as  I  distinguish  my 
personaUty  from  that  of  any  oi  you,  but  rather  the  activity 
which  goes  on  in  all  minds  that  think  or  reason  and  which, 
so  far  as  they  perceive  and  reason  correctly,  must  be  the 
same  in  all.  And  this  does  not  seem  to  be  what  we  com- 
monly mean  by  personality.  It  seems,  indeed,  to  be  a 
principle  of  unity  in  experience,  as  personality  also  is,  but 
a  different  principle,  combining  experiences  in  a  different 
order  and  dividing  them  into  groups  on  a  different  plan. 

Of  these  two  principles  one  is  the  principle  which 
combines  premises  with  the  conclusions  which  follow  from 


114  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

them,  the  thought  of  causes  with  the  thought  of  their 
effects,  the  members  of  series  with  what  comes  next  to 
them  in  mathematical  or  logical  order.  It  distinguishes 
logical  priority  from  temporal,  mere  sequence  from 
necessary  connexion,  one  kind  of  subject  or  department 
of  knowledge  from  another,  and  so  forth.  It  holds  together 
in  one  system  the  experience  of  all  rational  beings  ;  one 
such  being  has  no  more  right  in  it  than  another,  though 
one  may,  so  to  say,  through  greater  or  less  vigour  of 
mind,  or  more  or  less  abundant  opportunity,  be  able  to 
make  more  or  less  use  of  it  than  his  fellows.  It 
is  this  principle  of  which  Green  is,  I  take  it,  usually 
thinking  when  he  speaks  of  his  '  spiritual  principle  '  in 
experience.  No  one  would  deny  to  this  principle  the  name 
of  Reason. 

The  other  principle  combines  and  disjoins  experiences 
on  quite  a  different  plan.  It  combines  all  sensations, 
perceptions,  thoughts  which  I  call  mine  together,  as 
mine,  no  matter  how  little  logical  or  generally  intelhgible 
connexion  they  may  have  with  one  another.  It  divides 
all  sensations,  perceptions,  thoughts  of  yours  from  all  of 
mine,  no  matter  how  closely  they  may  resemble  mine. 
If,  by  communication  through  speech  or  writing  or  other- 
wise, my  thoughts  are  conveyed  to  you,  or  yours  to  me, 
according  to  this  principle  they  must  be  reckoned  twice 
over,  as  yours  and  as  mine,  although  their  content  be 
identical.  Now  we  must  not  ignore  the  fact  that  a  p)erson's 
thoughts  and  actions  are  at  any  rate  no  less  personal 
when  they  are  guided  by  reason,  and  from  grounds  which 
all  thinking  men  would  understand  and  approve,  than 
when  they  are  most  whimsical  and  capricious  or  depend 
upon  considerations  of  purely  private  concern.  But 
we  are  apt  to  use  the  word  personal  most  often  as  an 


PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY         115 

epithet  for  motives  or  interests  which  are  merely  personal 
• — that  is,  where  the  explanation  of  them  lies  in  connexions 
determined  only  by  the  second  of  the  two  principles  I 
have  just  described  and  not  in  connexions  established 
by  the  former. 

It  is  with  the  word  personal  here  as  with  the  phrase 
'  association  of  ideas.'  When  we  reason  we  may  of  course 
be  said  to  '  associate  ideas,'  though  to  explain  reason 
by  the  association  of  ideas,  as  a  famous  school  of  thinkers 
attempted  to  do,  is  to  put  the  cait  before  the  horse. 
But  a  quite  natural  instinct  has  tended  to  appropriate 
the  phrase  to  those  cases  where  the  '  association  '  of  ideas 
implied  by  an  action  is  not  what  we  should  usually  call 
rational,  but  depends  upon  some  individual  habit  or 
private  memory,  as  when  (to  take  a  trivial  instance)  a 
man  waking  in  the  night  at  an  hotel  feels  for  the  switch 
of  the  electric  light  not  where  he  had  found  it  when  about 
to  turn  it  off  on  going  to  bed,  but  in  the  place  corresponding 
to  that  of  the  switch  in  his  bedroom  at  home.  Here,  to 
account  for  what  he  does,  he  must  revert  to  an  '  association 
of  ideas  '  which  is  not  rational ;  and  it  is  in  the  same 
way  just  for  what  is  not  rational  in  men's  proceedings 
that  we  often  use  the  word  personal,  because  we  seek  the 
explanation  of  them  in  their  personal  history  and  not  in 
any  system  of  connexions  to  be  found  in  the  great  world 
which  is  common  to  us  all — in  mundo  majore  sive  communi, 
as  Bacon  quotes  from  Heraclitus.^ 

In  this  way  there  springs  up  an  antithesis  of  the  personal 
and  the  rational,  which  will  deserve  our  close  attention. 
But  in  attending  to  it  we  must  constantly  bear  in  mind 

*  Novum  Organum,  i.  42  ;  the  original  saying  of  Heraclitus  is 
quoted  in  Sext.  Emp.  adv.  Math.  vii.  133  (Heraclitus,  Frag.  92, 
ed.  ByAvater,  Diels   Vorsokratiker,   p.  66). 


116  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

that  it  will  mislead  us  if  \\'e  forget  that  only  in  the  minds 
of  peysuns  do  there  take  place  movements  of  thought  from 
ground  to  consequent,  from  cause  to  effect,  from  pre- 
mises to  conclusion  oi  vice  versa,  such  as  are  determined 
by  piinciples  of  reason  ;  that  it  is  only  minds  in  which 
we  supjiose  such  movements  of  thought  may  take  place 
that  we  should  describe  as  personal ;  and  lastl}',  that  the 
world  wherein  we  trace  the  connexion  which  we  call 
rational  is  a  world  of  which  persons  are  a  part  and,  to 
us  at  any  rate,  the  most  interesting  part.  Thus,  as  I 
hinted  before,  the  expression  '  irrationality  of  the  personal ' 
upon  which  I  fixed  as  conveniently  suggesting  the  problem 
with  which  I  am  now  concerned  is  not  really  an  appro- 
priate one.  For  it  is  persons  only  that  reason,  and  reason- 
ing beings  only  that  are  persons  ;  and  Reason  is  not 
unconcerned  with  persons  though  it  is  not  concerned 
with  persons  only.  Yet  the  personal  principle  of  unity 
or  organization  in  experience  docs  appear  to  be  distinct 
from  the  rational ;  and  in  cases  where  the  latter  affords 
no  ground  for  a  particular  connexion,  but  we  find  one  in 
the  former,  we  come  to  institute  a  contrast  and  opposi- 
tion between  them  which  suggests  that  irrationaUty  is 
characteristic  of  what  is  merely  personal. 

This  contrast  and  opposition  we  have  next  to  obseive 
at  a  higher  level  of  experience  than  that  to  which  we 
have  so  far  been  going  for  our  examples.  We  have  now 
to  observe  it  as  it  appears  in  the  sphere  of  Morality.  And 
here  we  shall  have  the  great  advantage  of  seeing  it  CiTi- 
phasized  in  the  ethical  systems  of  two  great  philosophers, 
by  v.hom  moreover  it  is  so  exhibited  as  to  display  those 
theological  bearings  for  the  sake  of  which  w^e  are  now 
studying  it.  These  two  great  philosophers  are  Kant 
and  Fichte. 


PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY         117 

It  is,  as  is  well  known,  the  doctrine  of  Kant  that  nothing 
can  be  morally  right  but  what  can  be  regarded  as  law 
universal,  as  obligatory,  that  is  to  say,  upon  all  rational 
beings.  This  does  not,  of  course,  mean  that  every  one's 
duty  is  the  same  as  every  one  else's  ;  that  what  is  right 
for  the  judge  is  right  for  the  criminal,  what  is  right  for 
the  parent  right  for  the  child,  what  is  right  for  the 
physician  right  for  his  patient.  But  it  does  imply  that 
every  one's  duty  is  always  what  would  be  any  one  else's 
under  those  circumstances.  Every  personal  interest  and 
personal  preference  must  be  discounted  in  ascertaining 
what  is  right.  The  presence  of  a  personal  inclination  to 
what  is  right  makes  it  possible  that  what  seems  to  be  a 
morally  right  action  is  after  all  due  merely  to  this  inclina- 
tion and  not  to  the  consciousness  that  it  is  our  duty. 
Thus  the  absence  of  inclination  or  the  presence  of  positive 
repugnance  to  a  certain  course  which  is  notwithstanding 
adopted  becomes  the  one  certain  test  of  genuine  morality  : 
for  the  consciousness  of  duty  alone  could  have  moved 
us  to  act  thus  clean  contrary  to  our  Hking.  And  so  Kant 
comes  sometimes  to  use  language  such  as  could  provoke 
the  celebrated  epigram  in  which  the  poet  Schiller  laughed 
at  the  notion  of  our  never  fulfilling  the  moral  law  except 
when  we  do  so  with  horror. ^ 

Now  in  Kant's  use  of  the  words  personal  and  personality 
there  is  certainly  an  ambiguity  ;  or  perhaps  it  would 
be  more  correct  to  say  that  he  does  not  clear  up  an  am- 
biguity involved  in  our  ordinary  use  of  the  words,  now 
for  what  is  private  and  peculiar  to  this  or  that  individual, 
now  for  knowledge  and  morality,  which  distinguish 
human  beings  not  onl}^  from  inanimate  things  but  from 
the  lower  animals  ;  for  these,  although  they  possess  life 
2  Die  Philosophen  {Sdknlar-Ausgahe,  i.  p..  268). 


118  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

and  consciousness,  we  do  not  call  persons  because  they 
lack  that  capacity.  Hence  he  sometimes  calls  by  the 
name  of  Personality  that  very  rational  nature  in  virtue 
of  which  we  can  will  to  do  what  we  see  to  be  right  for  all 
who  share  that  nature,  whether  we  as  individuals,  with 
private  feeUngs  and  interests  unshared  by  our  fellows, 
chance  to  like  it  or  not ;  sometimes,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  from  which  in  ascertaining  the  universal  laws  of 
moraUty  we  have  to  abstract  is  called  by  him  '  the  personal 
distinction  between  rational  beings.'  3  It  is  the  use  of 
the  word  personal  in  this  second  connexion  which  corre- 
sponds with  that  employment  of  it  of  which  I  spoke  before 
which  contrasts  the  personal  with  the  rational ;  although 
every  one  would  allow  that  rational  beings  within  our 
experience  are  personal,  nor  should  we  call  any  beings 
personal  which  we  did  not  take  to  be  rational. 

The  ambiguity  which,  as  we  have  just  seen,  was  left 
in  Kant's  use  of  personality  in  respect  of  ourselves,  re- 
appears in  his  theology.  The  representation  of  moral 
duties  as  commanded  by  God  he  approves,4  although  we 
are  always  to  remember  that  we  can  only  legitimately 
regard  them  as  commanded  by  God  because  v.e  are 
independently  conscious  of  their  obligatoriness ;  we  can- 
not otherwise  ascertain  them  to  be  commanded  by  God, 
and  then  regard  ourselves  as  in  consequence  obliged  to 
perform  them.  Nor  does  his  approval  of  this  way  of 
representing  them  appear  to  be  merely  a  concession  to 
the   demand  for   an  imaginative  representation  of   what 

3  Grundlegung  der  Metaph.  der  Sitten,  2  Abschn.  {Werke,  ed. 
Hart.  iv.  p.  281).  For  the  use  of  Personality  to  mean  the 
rational  nature  see  Kr.  der  pr.  Vern.  i  Th.  i  B.  iii.  H.  pts.  (Hart. 
V.  p.  91).     Cp.  Rechtslehre  (Hart.  vii.  pp.  20,  36). 

4  See  Rechtslehre  (Hart.  vii.  pp.  24,  137)  ;  cp.  Die  Religion  inner- 
halb.  d.  Cr.  d.  bl.  Vern.  Vorrede  zur  i  Ausgabe  (Hart.  vi.  p.  100). 


PERSONALITY   AND   RATIONALITY         119 

is  strictly  unimaginable  For  he  holds  that  reverence, 
which  is  our  proper  attitude  towards  the  moral  law,  can 
only  be  felt  towards  per  sons, 'i  and  this  would  seem  to 
suggest  that  the  representation  of  moral  laws  as  divine 
commands  may  be  something  more  than  an  imaginative 
personification.  Nor  do  I  suppose  that  to  Kant  himself 
it  was  no  more  than  this.  But  he  could  have  scarcely 
developed  the  theistic  implications  of  the  sentiment  of 
reverence  as,  for  example,  Martineau  does  in  his  Types 
of  Ethical  Theory  and  its  sequel  A  Study  of  Religion.^ 

For  the  principles  of  the  Critical  Philosophy,  which 
debarred  the  human  mind  from  any  knowledge  of  things 
as  they  are  in  themselves,  combined  with  that  stern 
aversion  from  the  least  compromise  with  sentiment  in 
matters  of  conduct  which  was  so  characteristic  of  Kant's 
moral  temperament  to  hinder  him  from  admitting  the 
legitimacy  of  that  personal  intercourse  with  God  in  the 
experience  of  which — or  at  least  in  the  desire  for  it — the 
affirmation  of  Personality  in  God  is  founded.  Hence, 
although  while  he  could  not  in  mature  life  bring  himself, 
except  when  it  was  his  official  duty  as  Rector  of  the 
University  of  Konigsberg,  to  take  part  in  public  worship  7 
he  could  nevertheless  allow  of  it  as  the  expression  to  one 
another  by  the  members  of  the  congregation  of  a  common 
resolution  to  order  their  lives  according  to  the  Moral 
Law  ** ;  for  private  prayer  as  distinct  from  such  a  resolution 

5  Kr.  der  pr.  Vern.  I.e.  (H.  v.  p.  8i). 

6  Or  as  my  lamented  and  honoured  teacher,  the  late  Professor 
Cook  Wilson,  did  in  a  paper  of  marked  originality,  which  made  a 
great  impression  on  those  who  heard  it  read  at  Oxford,  and  which 
I  hope  may  hereafter  be  made  public,  when  the  return  of  peace 
shall  have  set  his  literary  executors  free  to  carry  out  the  pious 
task  of  giving  to  the  world  what  he  has  left  behind  him. 

7  See  Stuckenberg,  Life  of  Kant,  p.  354. 

8  Die  Religion,   etc.,   Allg.   Anm.    (H.   vi.   p.   297). 


120  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

on  the  individual's  part,  to  which  when  alone  he  would 
not  need  to  give  outward  expression,  he  could  find  no 
room  at  all.  He  held  that  a  man  who  was  properly 
instructed  in  the  nature  of  MoraUty — as  bound  up  with 
the  autonomous  freedom  of  the  individual  will,  which  yet 
in  willing  made  no  account  of  its  individual  distinction 
from  other  rational  beings — could  not  but  be  ashamed 
to  be  found  by  a  stranger  upon  his  knees  alone. 9  Such 
an  attitude  would  imply  at  once  a  superstitious  neglect 
of  the  limits  of  human  experience,  as  though  God  could 
be  sensibly  present,  and  an  immoral  attempt  to  claim 
divine  aid  in  the  performance  of  our  duty  otherwise  than 
by  the  right  attitude  of  will  which  alone  could  deserve 
such  aid.  Nor  was  there  a  place  left  in  Kant's  religion 
for  any  love  of  God  other  than  the  cheerful  performance 
of  his  commandments  ;  any  more  than  in  his  ethics  he 
could  ascribe  moral  value  to  any  love  of  our  neighbour 
other  than  the  practical  love  shown  in  the  cheerful  per- 
formance of  our  duty  towards  him.^o 

We  find  thus  that  Kant  ascribes  moral  value  solely 
to  the  Good  Will,  which,  although  the  capacity  for  exercis- 
ing it  constitutes  the  essence  of  our  personality,  yet 
abstracts  altogether  from  the  features  that  distinguish 
one  person  from  another,  and  belongs  in  common  to  all 
rational  beings.  We  find  also  that,  in  close  connexion 
with  this  aspect  of  his  teaching,  he  eliminates  from  his 
theology  everything  suggestive  of  the  possibility  of  a 
communion  with  God  that  could  bring  into  play  any  part 
of  our  nature  except  this  same  Good  Will,  which  wills 
only  what  can  be  law  universal  for  all  rational  beings, 

9  Die  Religion,  etc.,  AUg.  Anm.  (H.  vi.  p.  294  «.);  cp.  Tugendlehre, 
I  B.  I  Aboh.  I  H.  pts.  iii.  Art.  §  12  (H.  vii.  p.  243). 

«o  Kritik  der  prakt.  Vern.  i  Th.  i  B.  iii.  H.  pts.  (H.  v.  pp.  87,88). 


PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY         121 

and  takes  no  account  ot  what  is  peculiar  to  this  or  that 
individual,  save  as  an  external  circumstance  affecting  the 
special  mode  in  which  the  Good  Will  is  exhibited  in  a 
particular  instance. 

But  it  is  in  Fichtc  that  we  find  this  same  point  of  view 
adopted  with  a  full  realization  of  its  paradoxical  results 
and  a  vehement  insistence  on  the  necessity  of  accepting 
them  which  are  absent  from  the  elder  thinker. 

Thus  he  says  :  "  The  utter  annihilation  of  the  individual 
and  submission  thereof  in  the  absolute  and  pure  form  of 
reason,  or  in  God,  is  most  certainly  the  final  end  of  finite 
reason."  "  It  is  true  that  he  admits  that  this  end  cannot 
be  attained  in  any  finite  time,  and  that  it  is  the  error  of 
mysticism  to  treat  it  as  though  it  could  be.  "I  am  never 
to  act,"  he  says  again,  "  without  having  first  referred 
my  act  to  this  conception  "  of  duty.  "  Hence  there  are 
no  indifferent  acts  at  all."  "  It  is  absolutely  immoral," 
he  tells  us,  "  to  take  ca,re  of  our  body  wdthout  the  con- 
viction that  it  is  thus  trained  and  preserved  for  moral 
activity — in  short,  for  conscience'  sake.  Eat  and  drink 
for  the  glory  of  God.  If  any  one  thinks  this  morality 
to  be  austere  and  painful  we  cannot  help  him,  for  there  is 
no  other."  "  Like  Kant,  he  insists  that  the  'love  of  our 
neighbour  '  which  is  a  duty  cannot  be  a  love  of  the  feelings. 
He  adds,  indeed,  tiiat  it  would  be  wrong  to  suppose  that 
therefore   it   requires   no   internal   affection,   but   merely 

"  Sittenlehre,  §  12  ;   Werke,  iv.  p.  151  (Eng.  tr.  p.  159). 

"  Sittenlehre,  §§  13,  18  ;  Werke,  iv.  pp.  155,  216  (Eng.  tr. 
pp.  164,  227).  Signer  Croce  agrees  with  Fichte  in  holding  that 
from  the  moral  point  of  view  there  can  be  no  indifferent  acts  ;  but 
he  gives  to  what  he  calls  the  '  economic '  character  of  all  actions  an 
independent  value  always  distinguishable  from,  though  always  pre- 
supposed by  the  ethical.  See  Wildon  Carr,  Phil,  of  Croce,  pp.  128  f. 
Kant,  Tugeiidlchre,  Einlcitung,  §  lo  [Werke,  ed.  Hart.  vii.  p.  213), 
admits  the  existence  of  adiaphora. 


122  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

external  conduct  towards  him,  for  no  act  can  be  moral 
which  does  not  proceed  from  an  inner  disposition.  It  is 
not  sufficient  to  act,  for  example,  as  if  we  loved  our  enemy, 
no  matter  how  much  we  may  hate  him  in  point  of  fact. 
"  I  must  love  him  :  that  is  to  say,  must  believe  him 
capable  of  reform."  ^3  Now,  whether  or  no  it  is  possible 
to  love  an  enemy  whom  one  does  not  believe  capable  of 
ceasing  to  be  one's  enemy,  it  is  surely  hard  not  to  feel 
that  to  believe  a  man  capable  of  reform  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  loving  him  in  any  natural  sense  of  that  word. 

It  is  only  the  logical  sequel  to  such  statements  as  I 
have  quoted  that  God  should  become  for  Fichte  nothing 
else  than  the  Moral  Order  of  the  universe,  beside  which 
there  is  no  God. ^4 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  deny — I  would  rather  insist  upon 
— the  attraction  of  this  vigorous  type  of  ethical  doctrine, 
exemplified  by  the  two  great  thinkers  of  whose  teaching 
I  have  reminded  you,  to  any  one  who  has  at  any  time 
heard  in  the  depths  of  his  soul  with  a  full  understanding 
of  its  unconditional  claim  upon  his  obedience  the  august 
voice  of  Duty,  and  has  cried  with  all  his  heart  to  that 
'  stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God  '  in  the  words  of  the 
poet  : — 

The  confidence  of  Reason  give. 

And  in  the  light  of  Truth  thy  bondman  let  me  live. '5 

If,  as  Fichte  implies  in  one  of  the  passages  which  I 
have  just  cited,  and  as  "  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,"  of 
which  Wordsworth  speaks  in  the  same  poem,  may  suggest 
to  generous  and  enthusiastic  souls,  any  appeal  for  a  fuller 

■3  Sittenlehre,  §  24;  Werke,  iv.  p.  311  (Eng.  tr.  p.  326). 
M  Ueber    den    Grund    unseres    Glaubens    an    eine   gottliche    Welt- 
regierung  [Werke,  v.  pp.  186  ff.). 
'5  Wordsworth,  Ode  to  Duty. 


PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY         123 

recognition  of  a  claim  for  consideration  on  the  part  of 
what  we  should  call  the  personal  feelings  of  individuals 
were  but  a  declension  from  the  true  standpoint  of  Reason, 
at  which  it  is  our  privilege  as  persons  to  be  able  to  take 
up  our  position,  we  could  scarcely  without  shame  allow 
ourselves  to  join  in  such  an  appeal.  But  we  may  with  a 
good  conscience  so  join,  if  we  do  it  in  the  profound  con- 
viction that  these  '  personal  feelings  '  have  themselves 
an  intrinsic  worth  to  which  the  rigorism  of  Kant  and 
Fichte  does  not  do  full  justice  ;  that  it  is  this  intrinsic 
worth  of  what  is  sacrificed  to  duty  which  makes  the  value 
of  the  sacrifice — as  the  hand  cut  off,  the  eye  plucked  out, 
in  the  Gospel  saying,  ^^  are  things  not  contemptible  but 
most  precious  ;  and  that  a  Moral  Order  in  which  persons 
are  sacrificed  to  what  is  itself  impersonal  is  really  robbed 
of  that  claim  to  reverence  which  only  when  envisaged 
as  God,  as  a  Being  with  whom  persons  can  stand  in  personal 
relations,  it  can  in  full  measure  possess. 

Moreover  when  we  ask  ourselves  whether  we  could  be 
content  with  the  ideal  which  Fichte,  while  admitting  it 
to  be  unattainable  in  any  finite  time, ^7  confesses  to  be  in 
his  view  the  ideal  to  which  our  moral  aspirations  point, 
must  we  not  hesitate  to  reply  in  the  affirmative  ?  Must 
we  not  admit  that  the  picture  of  a  moral  character  which 
should  be  the  mere  embodiment  of  indifferent  Reason 
would  be  unlovely  and  unvenerable  ?  Morality,  though 
claiming  to  be  the  rule  of  life  according  to  reason,  when 
it  is  thus  set  in  sharp  opposition  to  all  that  is  personal, 
tends  itself  to  assume  a  strange  resemblance  to  what  we 
call  mechanism.  Now  mechanism,  though  the  work  of 
Reason,  is  merely  mechanical  just  because  Reason  does 

'6  Mark  ix.  43,  47. 

'7  Sittenlehre,  §  12  ;  Werke,  iv.  p.  151  (Eng.  tr.  p.  157) 


124  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

not  any  longer  live  in  it,  so  that  for  any  fresh  initiative 
we  should  have  to  resort  to  a  new  act  of  Reason  from 
without,  and  take  the  watch  back  to  the  watchmaker. 

Thus,  if  it  is  the  element  of  seeming  irrationality  in 
what  is  personal  that  makes  it  difficult,  as  we  see  from 
the  example  of  Fichte,  to  attribute  Personality  to  God, 
it  is  the  absence  from  Reason,  when  divorced  from 
Personality,  of  what  makes  Reason  a  possible  object  of 
religious  reverence  which  excites  our  discontent  with 
the  representation  of  God  as  an  impersonal  Reason. 

Now  it  is  precisely  because,  as  Fichte  points  out.  Morality, 
conceived  as  he  conceives  it,  implies  an  ideal  proposed 
to  a  finite  being  which  is  yet  unattainable  in  any  finite 
time,  that  later  thinkers  have  objected  to  Fichte's  view  of 
Morality  as  the  essential  feature  of  the  supreme  system 
of  Reality.  They  hold  the  absence  of  contradiction  to  be 
our  one  criterion  of  the  fitness  of  any  features  of  our 
experience  to  persist  unchanged  as  an  element  of  that 
supreme  system. ^^  And  so  in  their  view  neither  Morality, 
which,  by  the  admission  of  its  great  champion,  has  a 
contradiction  at  its  heart,  nor  yet  Personality,  which  as 
the  subject  of  Morahty  is  always  in  Morality  striving  to 
be  that  which  yet  it  cannot  be  without  ceasing  to  be 
Personality,  can  assert  a  claim  to  final  and  ultimate 
reality.  ^9 

Such  is  the  position  taken  up,  for  example,  by  Mr. 
Bosanquet.  The  Absolute  of  Mr.  Bosanquet's  philosophy 
may  be  said  to  be,  like  Fichte's,  an  order  or  system  which 
determines  the  true  mutual  relations  of  all  things,  and 
therefore,  among  the  rest,  of  all  persons,  but  which  is 

"8  See  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  136  and  passim  ; 
Bosanquet,   Individuality  and    Value,   p.   46   and  passim. 

9  See  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  173  ;  Bosanquet, 
Value  and  Destiny,  pp.  136  ff. 


PERSONALITY   AND   RATIONALITY         125 

not  itself  a  person  or  persons.  It  differs  from  Fichte's 
in  that  it  cannot  be  called  a  moral  order  ;  since  it  is  not 
in  Morality  that  its  true  nature  is  most  perfectly  exhibited. 
The  "  proper  name  "  of  the  principle  or  spirit  of  this 
system  is,  as  Mr.  Bosanquet  tells  us, '  non-contradiction.'  *© 
The  name  of  a  Moral  Order  might  indeed  seem  to  be 
a  more  inspiring  designation  for  it  than  this  negative 
and  highly  abstract  phrase.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  easier  to  translate  '  non-contradiction '  by  Love 
than  so  to  translate  '  Morality  '  which  seems  at  first,  as 
is  shown  by  the  interpretations  placed  by  Kant  and 
Fichte  upon  the  Gospel  precept  to  love  one's  neighbour, 
to  leave  no  room  for  much  that  the  word  Love  must  natu- 
rally suggest.  Thus  Mr.  Bosanquet  can  represent  his 
philosophy  of  life  as  fundamentally  the  same  with  that 
of  the  great  poet  of  mediaeval  Christendom.  But  though 
this  identification,  to  which  he  often  recurs,  is  plainly 
very  near  to  Mr.  Bosanquet's  heart,  I  find  it  impossible 
not  to  think  that  there  is  really  a  wide  difference  between 
Dante's  view  of  the  world  and  his  own,  a  difference  which 
is  very  closely  connected  with  the  absence  from  Mr. 
Bosanquet's  theology,  if  theology  we  may  call  it,  of  the 
notion  of  Divine  Personality, 

Mr.  Bosanquet  would  probably  regard  the  obvious 
unlikeness  between  the  two  as  due  rather  to  the  use  by 
Dante  of  a  traditional  phraseology  and  imagery  which 
for  us  of  the  modern  world  has  no  longer  the  significance 
that  it  had  for  him,  than  to  a  real  divergence  in  his  own 
view  from  the  fundamental  convictions  which  found 
expression  in  the  Divine  Comedy. 

I  think  myself  that  some  of  what  Mr.  Bosanquet  would 

»o  See  a  review  by  Mr.  Bosanquet  of  Prof.  Pringle  Pattison's  Idea 
of  God,  in  Mind  (October  191 7). 


126  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

thus  consider  to  be  unessential  to  the  deepest  meaning 
of  Dante  belonged  in  fact  to  the  substance  of  Dante's 
faith,  and  that  the  failure  to  recognize  this  is  the  cause 
of  what  I  venture  to  regard  as  Mr.  Bosanquet's  mistake 
respecting  the  relation  of  his  own  philosophy  to  the  poet's. 
But  upon  this  I  shall  not  dwell  at  present ;  we  shall  find 
ourselves  returning  to  the  subject  later  on  in  other  con- 
nexions. For  the  present  I  am  concerned  only  with 
Mr.  Bosanquet's  account  of  the  true  system  of  Reality 
which  makes  it  more  than  a  merely  moral  order,  but  which 
still  leaves  it,  though  embracing  persons  and  determining 
those  mutual  relations  in  and  through  which  they  possess 
their  personality,  yet  itself  without  personality  of  its 
own.  And  here  I  would  call  your  attention  to  a  remark- 
able passage  in  the  Gifford  Lectures  on  The  Principle  of 
Individuality  and  Value  which,  unless  I  am  greatly  mis- 
taken, reveals,  as  it  were  by  accident,  the  defect  in  this 
account.  "  We  might " — so  we  find  Mr.  Bosanquet 
saying — "  compare  the  Absolute  to  .  .  .  Dante's  mind 
as  uttered  in  the  Divine  Comedy.  .  .  .  The  whole  poetic 
experience  is  single  and  yet  includes  a  world  of  space 
and  persons."  21  I9  it  not  clear  that  this  analogy  would 
naturally  lead  up  to  the  conception  of  a  personal  Absolute  ? 
For  the  mind  of  Dante  to  which  the  Absolute  is  here 
compared  is  certainly  a  personal  mind.  No  doubt  it  is 
not  fair  to  press  too  far  an  analogy  admittedly  introduced 
only  to  illustrate  a  particular  point.  And  so  I  will  resist 
the  temptation  to  do  more  than  ask  whether  in  Dante's 
introduction  of  himself  among  the  characters  of  his 
Comedy  we  may  not  find  an  analogue  to  that  personal 
intercourse  with  human  souls  which  ReUgion  ascribes 
to  God,  but  which  it  seems  to  philosophers  of  Mr,  Bosan- 
»«  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  xxxvii  (in  abstract  of  Lecture  X). 


PERSONALITY   AND   RATIONALITY         127 

quel's  school  impossible  to  ascribe  to  the  Absolute,  because 
human  souls  are  included  within  the  Absolute.  And  no 
doubt  one  would  not  even  have  been  tempted  to  put  this 
question  if  Mr.  Bosanquet  had  happened  to  choose  the 
mind  of  Shakespeare  instead  of  the  mind  of  Dante  for 
his  comparison.  But  in  that  case,  too,  the  inclusive  mind 
would  still  have  been  personal,  although  in  none  of  his 
plays  is  Shakespeare  himself  a  dramatis  persona. 

The  denial  of  personality  to  the  system  within  which 
we  finite  persons  are  included,  not  only  as  respects  some 
particular  aspect  of  our  being,  but  wholly  and  throughout, 
wherein,  to  use  familiar  words,  '  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being,'  '*  in  such  accounts  of  its  nature  as  we 
have  just  been  reviewing,  presupposes  in  truth  that 
contrast  or  antithesis  of  Personality  and  Reason  to  the 
consideration  of  which  this  Lecture  has  been  devoted. 
Just  because  the  supreme  system,  which  the  authors  of 
these  accounts  are  endeavouring  to  describe,  is  to  be 
the  complete  expression  of  Reason,  it  can  include  but 
cannot  itself  possess  Personality.  Reason  is  indeed  the 
characteristic  constituent  of  Personality ;  but  there  is 
always  in  Personality  something  which  falls  short  of  the 
universality  of  Reason,  and  therefore  it  cannot  without 
self-contradiction  be  ascribed  to  the  universal  Reason  ; 
for  so  to  ascribe  it  would  be  to  speak  in  effect  of  a  particu- 
lar universal.  Particulars  must  always  be  particulars  of 
a  universal ;  but  the  universal  itself  is  by  definition  not  a 
particular. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  rejoinder  may  be  made  to  this 

argument,  and  this  rejoinder  will  presuppose  the  same 

antithesis  as  did  the  argument  to  which  it  is  a  reply. 

The  thought  of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  as  a  single  system 

»»  Acts  xvii.  28. 


128  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

wherein  we  "  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,"  pri- 
marily presents  itself,  both  in  the  history  of  mankind  at 
large  and  normally  in  that  of  the  individual,  as  a  religious 
thought,  and  is  associated  with  the  characteristically 
religious  emotions  of  awe  and  reverence. 23  Such  thinkers 
as  those  I  have  instanced  in  this  Lecture  as  denying 
Personality  to  this  Supreme  System,  Fichte  and  Mr. 
Bosanquet,  have  certainly  no  intention  of  dissociating 
these  emotions  from  that  thought.  But  I  am  not  satisfied 
that  such  dissociation  is  not  in  the  long  run  inevitable, 
unless  our  relation  to  the  universe  is  conceived  as  essentially 
of  the  same  nature  as  our  relation  to  a  person  ;  and  that 
it  is  not  in  fact  merely  postponed  by  the  circumstance 
that  the  language  in  which  the  philosophers  who  deny 
personality  to  the  Absolute  find  themselves  driven  to 
speak  of  it  is  permeated  by  the  suggestion  of  that  which 
they  explicitly  deny. 

It  will  no  doubt  be  said  that,  when  such  thinkers  deny 
Personality  to  the  Absolute,  they  do  not  intend  to  assimi- 
late it  to  what  is  confessedly  less  than  personal — for 
example,  to  a  force  like  electricity — but  to  emphasize 
the  necessity  of  regarding  it  as  free  from  the  limitations 
of  finite  Personality,  as  more  than  personal.  And  I  should 
most  certainly  not  hesitate  to  allow  that,  if  we  may 
ascribe  Personality  to  God,  it  must  be  only  in  a  sense 
which  will  admit  of  a  great  difference  between  what  we 
call  Personality  in  ourselves  and  what,  for  want  of  a 
better  term,  we  call  Personality  in  him.  What,  however, 
I  think  even  the  most  cautious  maintainers  of  Divine 
Personality  must  assert  against  such  a  critic  of  their 
view  as  Mr.  Bosanquet  is  the  capacity  of  finite  persons 

»3  Cp.  Royce,  Problem  of  Christianity,  ii.  8,  and  my  Group  Theories 
of  Religion,  pp.  188  f. 


PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY         129 

for  what  can  only  be  called  a  personal  relation  to  the 
Supreme  Reality — and  therefore  the  presence  in  the 
Supreme  Reality  of  whatever  is  necessary  for  the  exist- 
ence of  such  a  relation  thereto. 

It  will  throw,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  some  light  upon 
this  matter  if  we  inquire  why  the  man  in  the  street  is 
disposed,  if  told  of  the  ideaUsm  of  Berkeley,  to  dismiss 
it  with  a  kind  of  incredulous  contempt  as  a  visionary 
paradox,  while  a  report  of  the  speculations  of  physicists 
as  to  the  electrical  constitution  of  matter  he  is  ready  to 
receive  with  surprise  indeed,  but  yet  with  respect.  I 
think  that  this  difference  of  attitude  towards  two  doctrines 
which  might  at  first  sight  seem  to  be  equally  subversive 
of  ordinary  preconceptions  is  to  be  thus  explained.  Berke- 
ley seems  to  treat  our  everyday  experience  of  a  material 
world  as  an  illusion,  while  the  physicist  is  taken  to  be 
merely  telling  us  that,  while  genuine  enough  as  far  as  it 
goes,  this  same  everyday  experience  has  brought  us  but 
a  very  little  way  in  the  knowledge  of  what  we  are  dealing 
with  ;  so  that,  if  we  knew  more  about  it,  we  should  find 
it  to  be  something  very  different  from  what  it  strikes  one 
as  being  at  first  sight.  I  am  of  course  well  aware  that 
Berkeley  insists  that  he  is  denjang  nothing  to  which  the 
senses  bear  witness ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  I  do  not 
forget  the  difficult  problems  which  may  be  propounded 
about  the  relation  of  the  theories  of  physicists  to  the  sensible 
facts  on  which  they  are  supposed  to  be  based.  But  I 
am  now  speaking  only  of  the  impression  made  by  these 
two  types  of  speculation  upon  the  ordinary  man  on  his 
first  acquaintance  with  them.  I  do  not  think  that  it  can 
be  denied  that  it  is  on  the  whole  such  as  I  have  described. 
It  is  then  because,  rightly  or  wrongly,  Berkeley  is  thought 
to  aim  in  his  argument  at  proving  that  we  are  mocked 


180  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

in  our  deep-seated  conviction  of  being  constantly,  as  we 
say,  '  up  against '  a  world  of  bodies  which  are  there, 
independently  of  us,  whether  we  are  aware  of  them  or 
not,  while  the  physicists,  without  casting  any  doubt  upon 
the  reaUty  of  this  world,  do  but  concern  themselves  with 
the  discovery  of  further  facts  about  it,  with  which  we 
have  no  particular  business,  that  the  teaching  of  the 
former  is  at  once  repudiated,  but  that  of  the  latter  accepted 
without  demur. 

This  difference  of  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  ordinary 
man  towards   Berkeley   and   the   physicists   respectively 
in  regard  of  the  material  world,  may  help  us  to  understand 
a  Uke  difference  of  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  ordinary 
religious  man  toward  two  distinct  kinds  of  theological 
speculation  which  agree  in  proclaiming  the  inadequacy 
of  the  anthropomorphic  imagery  implied  in  the  common 
language   of  religious   devotion.     The  ordinary  rehgious 
man,  at  any  rate  among  ourselves,  is,  one  may  say,  per- 
fectly willing  to  allow  that  the  nature  of  God  must  infinitely 
transcend  the  reach  of  his  understanding,  and  that  any 
description    he  can  give  of    it  undoubtedly  falls  so  far 
short  of  what  it  truly  is,  that  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
fuller  knowledge,  it  would  seem  scarcely  to  convey  any 
information  at  all.     Hence  if,  on  other  grounds,  he  is 
disposed   to   accept,   for   example,   the   doctrine   of   the 
Trinity  set  forth  in  the  Athanasian  Creed  as  authoritative, 
he  will  not  be  deterred  from  doing  so  and  regarding  it 
with  veneration  merely  by  the  fact  that  it  very  likely 
conveys  to  his  mind  no  distinct  idea,  or  by  inability  to 
say  what  difference  it  would  make  to  his  conduct  or  to 
his  religious  feelings  if  he  had  never  known  it.     But,  if 
a  view  like  Mr.  Bosanquet's  were  put  before  him,  I  feel 
little  doubt  that  he  would  interpret  it  as  dissolving  what 


PERSONALITY  AND   RATIONALITY         131 

he  had  taken  for  an  experience  of  reciprocal  intercourse, 
as  with  another  person,  between  himself  and  God  into 
illusion,  and  would  regard  it  as  leaving  him  no  real 
God  at  all,  just  as  the  Berkeleian  philosophy  is  commonly 
interpreted  as  leaving  us  no  real  material  world  at  all. 
On  the  other  hand,  just  as  the  physicist  is  taken,  even 
where  his  speculations  seem  most  remote  from  our  every- 
day apprehension,  to  be  merely  telling  us  that  the  real 
material  world  is  very  different,  when  you  come  to  know 
it  better,  from  what  it  seems  at  first  sight,  so  a  theology 
like  that  of  the  Athanasian  Creed  may  discover  as  many 
mysteries  as  it  pleases  in  the  nature  of  God  so  long  as  it 
does  not  deny  that  God  is  real,  as  a  person  is  real  with 
whom  we  may  enjoy  a  reciprocal  personal  intercourse. 

It  is  upon  the  possibility  of  this  reciprocal  intercourse 
that  the  whole  question  turns.  A  child  will  offer  sweets 
from  its  pocket  to  an  elder  friend  with  the  intent  to  give 
him  the  pleasure  the  like  offer  would  give  to  the  child 
himself.  He  may  feel  disappointed  that  his  sweets  are 
not  appreciated,  or  baffled  by  the  inexplicable  pre- 
occupations which  divert  the  attention  of  his  elders  from 
his  own  concerns ;  but,  whatever  momentary  distress 
these  things  may  cause,  he  is  sure  that  he  has  to  do 
with  a  real  person,  who,  however  strange  his  tastes  and 
pursuits  may  be  to  the  child's  apprehension,  can  answer 
the  child  and  understand  him  and  perhaps  care  for  him. 
It  would  be  a  very  different  thing  if  he  came  to  find  that 
there  was  not  really  any  person  there  at  all,  that  he  was 
no  more  in  communication  with  any  one  other  than  him- 
self than  when  talking  to  himself  and  consciously 
*  making  believe.' 

So  too,  in  the  course  of  the  religious  development  of 
our  race,  we  may  not  only  come  to  say  '  No  '  to  the  question 


132  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

put  by  the  prophet  in  God's  name,  '  Thinkest  thou  that 
I  will  eat  bull's  flesh  and  drink  the  blood  of  goats  ?  '  24  but 
may  even  doubt  whether  we  can  suppose  that  the  thanks- 
giving and  vows  which  the  Psalmist  would  have  us  offer 
in  their  place  will  be  accepted  by  God  exactly  as  a  mighty 
king  might  accept  them.  Yet  it  is  fallacious  to  infer 
that  because  there  is  in  one  sense  no  limit  to  the  process 
in  which  we  lay  aside  in  turn  every  imaginary  picture  of 
God  as  inadequate  to  his  infinite  perfection,  therefore  a 
transformation  which  leaves  no  Being  to  whom  we  can 
intelligibly  ascribe  a  reciprocation  of  our  personal  address 
to  him  is  but  a  further  extension  of  this  same  process. 
There  was  after  all  a  true  instinct  in  the  tradition  which 
saw  in  Spinoza,  '  God-intoxicated '  as  he  has  been  called 
(and  only  a  very  unsympathetic  reader  of  the  last  book  of 
his  Ethics  can  deny  his  claim  to  the  epithet),  the  great 
standard-bearer  of  atheism.  For  when  he  said  that, 
while  we  could  have  an  intellectual  love  of  God  and  God 
could  love  himself  in  our  love  of  him,  yet  God  could  not 
be  said  to  love  us,  he  did,  after  all,  condemn  the  religious 
man  to  the  doom  of  Ixion,  who  found  in  his  embrace  not 
a  goddess  but  a  cloud. 

No,  it  will  be  replied,  this  similitude  does  not  do  justice 
to  those  whom  you  are  criticizing.  Ixion's  cloud  lacked 
all  that  made  the  goddess  desirable  ;  but  in  the  Absolute 
Mr.  Bosanquet  would  have  us  acknowledge  all  that  piety 
seeks  in  God  and  more.  I  do  not  know  whether  I  am  right 
in  detecting  a  certain  distinction  here  between  the  views 
of  Mr.  Bosanquet  and  Mr.  Bradley.  It  appears  to  me 
that  on  the  whole  Mr.  Bosanquet,  though  holding  that 
to  think  of  a  God  with  whom  we  could  be  in  personal 
relations  is  to  think  of  a  merely  finite  being  and  not  of 

»4  Psa.  1.  13. 


PERSONALITY   AND   RATIONALITY         133 

the  Absolute,  yet  finds  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
Absolute  the  satisfaction  of  his  religious  aspirations, 
while  Mr.  Bradley  dwells  rather  on  the  thought  that 
philosophy  must  recognize  the  God  to  whom  religious 
devotion  is  directed  to  be  not  the  Absolute  but,  like  all 
else  in  our  experience,  an  appearance  of  the  Absolute. 
God,  he  would  say,  the  object  of  religion,  must  be  finite, 
and  therefore  cannot  be  the  Absolute  ;  but  Religion 
is  a  real  experience  ;  there  is  an  intercourse  between 
oneself  and  God  ;  yet  neither  in  oneself  nor  in  God  can 
one  find  ultimate  reality  ;  both  are  appearances  of  that 
which  is  ultimately  real,  but  it,  the  Absolute,  trans- 
cends them  both.  We  have  here  suggested  to  us  the 
thought,  which  is  urged  upon  us  also  by  writers  of  a  very 
different  school  to  Mr.  Bradley,  of  a  *  finite  God.'  By 
recognizing  that  God  is  finite  it  has  seemed  to  many 
that  we  can  escape  from  the  difficulties  which  came  to 
light  in  considering  the  relations  of  Personality  to  the 
supreme  system  of  Reality.  God  is  a  person,  so  that 
personal  relations  with  him  are  possible  ;  but  he  is  not 
the  supreme  system  of  Reality  ;  for  he  and  we  are  alike 
included  within  it.  It  is  to  the  consideration  of  this 
suggestion  that  I  propose  to  devote  my  next  Lecture, 


LECTURE   VI 

THE  DOCTRINE   OF  A    FINITE  GOD 

The  subject  of  this  Lecture  was,  it  will  be  remembered, 
to  be  the  conception — now  so  frequently  in  one  shape 
or  another  brought  to  our  notice — of  a  finite  God,  which 
it  is  sometimes  thought  will  satisfy  the  claims  at  once 
of  Religion  and  of  Metaphysics.  For  a  finite  God,  we  are 
told,  can  be  a  person,  in  personal  relations  with  ourselves  ; 
but  since  he  is  admitted,  as  finite,  not  to  be  the  Infinite 
and  all-inclusive  Reality  to  which  philosophers  have  in 
recent  times  given  the  name  of  the  Absolute,  the  diffi- 
culties of  ascribing  personality,  with  its  implication  of 
finitude,  to  the  Absolute,  which  by  definition  is  not 
finite,  are  at  once  removed.  This  conception  appears, 
as  I  have  said,  in  several  forms.  To  one — which  I  may 
conveniently  associate  with  the  name  of  Mr,  Bradley — 
I  referred  toward  the  close  of  my  last  Lecture.  Here 
God  is  not  the  Absolute,  but  (hke  every  separate  object 
of  experience)  an  appearance  of  that  Reality  which,  when 
we  speak  of  it  not  as  it  appears  but  as  it  is  in  its  undivided 
harmonious  unity,  we  call  the  Absolute.  We  may  in 
the  end  find  this  the  most  intelHgible  form  of  the  doctrine 
of  a  finite  God  ;  but  it  is  not  the  form  of  it  which  to  most 
people  the  phrase  would  immediately  suggest. 

More   familiar   perhaps   is   a   form   of   the   doctrine   in 

134 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF  A   FINITE   GOD        135 

which   the   all-inclusive   Reality,   however   designated,   is 
regarded  as  an  aggregate  of  spiritual  beings,  fundamentally 
and   ultimately   distinct     from   one   another,   to   one   or 
more  among  whom  is   ascribed  a  vast  superiority  over 
the  rest,  which  fits  it  (or  them)  to  be  worshipped  by  the 
rest.     A   single   Supreme   Being   of   this   sort   may   even 
be  considered — as  by  Dr.   Rashdall,  who  has  in  several 
of   his  works »  elaborated   a   view  of   this  kind — as   the 
original  source  from  which  all  the  other  beings  derive 
their  existence.     Such  a  God  is  said  to  be  finite,  as  being 
limited  both  by  the  other  beings  who  through  his  own 
will  have   come   to   coexist   with  him   and   also  by  the 
necessities  of  his  own  nature,  which  is  described,  after 
the  analogy  of  what  we  call  our  own  original  and  natural 
endowment,   as  something  which  he  finds  given,  and  as 
setting   to   his   activity   a  bound   which  it   cannot   pass. 
Other  writers — for  instance  Professor  Howison  ^ — would 
make  the  other  beings  beside  pod  not  merely  coexistent 
but  coeternal  with  him  ;    and  here  too  we  must,  I  think, 
suppose  the  world  in  which  he  and  they  coexist  to  have 
a  nature  of  its  own  which  determines  that  of  the  beings 
which  it  includes  ;   this  nature  could,   however,   not  be 
described  as  the  nature  of  that  "  firstborn  among  many 
brethren  "  3  who  is  called  God  rather  than  as  the  nature 
of  any  other  member  of  the  universal  society. 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  of  contemporary  novelists 
has  lately  presented  to  us  4  as  a  '  new  religion,'  challenging 
the  allegiance  of  all  who  desire  to  prove  themselves  equal 

'  See  Personal  Idealism,  pp.  369  ff.  ;  Contentio  Veritatis  (1902), 
pp.  34  ff.  ;  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  ii.  pp.  238  ff.  ;  Philosophy  and 
Religion  (1909),  pp.  loi  ff. 

»  Limits  of  Evolution  and  other  Essays,  p.  359. 

3  The  phrase  is  used  of  Christ,  Rom.  viii.  29. 

4  In  God  tht  Invisible  King,  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells. 


136  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

to  the  demands  of  our  time,  yet  another  version  of  the 
doctrine  of  a  finite  God.  The  God  of  Mr.  Wells  is  an 
object  of  personal  loyalty  and  devotion.  He  is  also 
in  some  sense,  as  the  phrase  goes,  '  immanent '  in  us, 
and  not  merely  another  than  we,  standing  in  external 
relations  with  us.  But  he  is  not  the  all-inclusive  and 
ultimate  Reality.  He  is  not  one  with  that  '  Veiled  Being,' 
nor  does  our  knowledge  of  him  throw  any  special  light 
upon  its  nature.  There  is  a  genuine  reUgious  experience 
open  to  individual  human  beings  of  which  this  God  is 
the  object ;  but  such  experience  has  merely  a  racial  not 
a  cosmic  significance.  I  venture  to  think  that  the  chief 
interest  of  this  latest  Gospel  lies  not  in  its  philosophical 
value,  nor  even  in  its  capacity  of  exerting  a  practical 
influence  on  men's  lives,  but  in  the  appeal  of  its  author 
to  certain  personal  experiences  of  his  own,  as  authenti- 
cating the  creed  of  which  he  has  proclaimed  himself  the 
apostle.  I  would  therefore  call  attention  to  a  fact  of 
some  importance  about  these  personal  experiences  as 
described  by  Mr.  Wells,  which  ought  not  to  be  overlooked 
in  passing  judgment  upon  the  doctrine  which  they  are 
alleged  to  support. 

It  is  an  essential  feature  of  this  doctrine  that  the  God 
whom  it  invites  us  to  accept  as  our  '  invisible  king '  does 
not  in  any  way  claim  to  be  the  author  or  indwelling  Spirit 
of  Nature.  But  the  book  in  which  the  new  religion  is 
propounded  is  not,  as  it  happens,  the  first  in  which  its 
prophet  has  related  the  personal  experiences  in  which 
his  God  revealed  himself  to  his  soul.  They  had  already 
been  described  in  an  earUer  confession  of  the  author's 
faith,  published  under  the  title  of  First  and  Last  Things. 
But  the  account  of  them  there  given  leaves  no  doubt 
that  Mr.  Wells  was  then  without  suspicion  that  it  was 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   A   FINITE   GOD        137 

any  other  being  than  the  Spirit  immanent  in  Nature 
with  whom  he  had  enjoyed  communion.  It  is  clearly 
only  as  the  result  of  subsequent  reflexion  upon  difiiculties 
which  (as  he  is  well  aware)  are  no  novelties  in  the  history 
of  theology  that  he  has  come  to  hold  a  different  opinion  ; 
although  it  would  seem  that,  by  a  common  psychological 
illusion,  his  later  judgment  has  coloured  his  memory  of 
the  original  experiences. 5  Mr.  Wells  is  not  unconscious 
of  the  kinship  between  his  speculations  and  those  of  the 
thinkers  of  early  Christian  times  who  distinguished  the 
Author  of  Nature  as  a  being  of  wholly  different  character 
from  the  Author  of  the  Gospel.  In  the  light  of  his  earher 
record  of  the  mystical  experiences  upon  which  he  founds 
his  belief,  we  may  see  in  these  experiences  a  confirmation 
of  the  contention  which  is  the  theme  of  TertuUian's  great 
treatise  against  one  of  those  thinkers — the  celebrated 
Marcion — the  contention  that,  whatever  the  difficulties 
of  reconciHng  the  moral  attributes  of  God  with  the  pheno- 
mena of  nature,  we  can  never  consistently  mean  by  God 
less  than  that  being  whose  witness  is,  in  words  which 
I  quoted  in  another  connexion,  in  my  first  Lecture,  totum 
quod  sumus  et  in  quo  sumus  :  our  whole  selves  and  our 
whole  environment. 

I  feel  convinced  that  when  once  a  stage  of  intellectual 
development  has  been  reached  at  which  the  question 
of  the  relation  of  God  to  the  Absolute  would  arise,  no 
conception  of  God  which  takes  him  for  less  than  the 

5  See  First  and  Last  Things  (1908),  p.  50.  In  a  revised  edition 
of  this  work,  published  1917,  Mr.  Wells  adds  the  significant  note  : 
"  So  in  1908.  Since  then  I  have  cleared  up  a  certain  confusion 
between  God  as  the  Master  of  the  Scheme  and  God  as  the  Presence 
in  the  Heart.  That  is  the  chief  intellectual  difference  between 
this  and  its  successor  in  191 7,  God  the  Invisible  King."  I  had 
not  seen  this  note  when  I  wrote  the  words  in  the  text. 


138  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

ultimate  Reality  will  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  religious 
consciousness.  And  this  is  so  because  it  is,  I  think,  in 
principle  true  from  the  first  that  what  men  have  sought 
in  religion  is  always  communication  with  that  which  is 
supposed  or  suspected  to  possess  within  itself  the  secret 
of  our  life  and  of  our  surroundings,  and  therefore  to 
exert  over  us  and  them  a  mysterious  power  which  we 
shall  do  well  to  enlist  upon  our  side. 

Wherever  this  hidden  power  may  be  conjectured  by 
primitive  men  to  reside — in  whatever  queer-shaped  stone, 
or  totem  animal,  or  initiated  wizard,  or  vanished  founder 
of  their  tribal  customs — it  is  dislodged  from  one  abiding 
place  after  another  as  knowledge  is  increased  and  the 
horizon  of  the  worshippers'  interests  widens,  and  at 
last  we  discover  that  it  is  after  nothing  less  than 
the  ultimate  Reality  wherein  "  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being  "  ^  that  we  are  inquiring  ;  this  which 
we  have  been  seeking  throughout.  Now  it  is,  I  suppose, 
precisely  because  in  Religion  we  seek  to  place  ourselves 
effectively  in  touch  with  what  nevertheless  must,  it  would 
seem,  already  include  us  within  itself  that  a  philosopher 
like  Mr.  Bradley  can  find  in  it  a  necessary  and  essential 
contradiction  which  forces  us,  when  we  apply  the 
criterion  of  non-contradiction,  to  regard  it  as,  in  the  end, 
appearance  only.  The  other  forms  of  the  doctrine  of  a 
'  finite  God '  fail,  I  will  venture  to  say,  just  because  they 
abandon  the  attempt  to  identify  God  with  the  Absolute, 
and  in  so  doing  abandon  the  quest  which  is  Religion. 
But  what  I  have  called  Mr.  Bradley's  form  of  the 
doctrine  invites  a  more  detailed  discussion,  for  here  we 
find  what  we  miss  in  the  rest,  a  clear  recognition  that  to 
abandon  that  quest  must  be  in  the  long  run  the  ruin  of  the 

*  Acts   xvii.   28. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF  A   FINITE   GOD        139 

« 

very  thing  which  it  is  intended  by  this  strategy  of  retreat 
to  save  from  destruction  at  the  hands  of  Philosophy. 

It  is  indeed  true  that  all  genuine  religion  involves  a 
paradox,  even  if  we  do  not  care  to  call  it  a  contradiction. 
On  the  one  hand  religious  worship  is  ever  full  of  the 
insistence  upon  the  vast  distance  between  the  divine 
majesty  and  the  worshipper  who  humbles  and  prostrates 
himself  before  it  ;  and  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  of  the 
essence  of  Religion  that  this  vast  distance  is  annihilated  ; 
that  the  worshipper  comes  to  live  in  God  and  God  in  him  ; 
so  that  it  is  not  to  himself  but  to  God  in  him  that  he 
attributes  the  acts  wherein  he  expresses  the  life  which 
through  his  religion  he  is  thus  enabled  to  live. 

It  is  true  also  that  it  is  not  Mr.  Bradley's  intention 
by  his  formula  that  in  Religion  we  have  only  Appearance 
to  reduce  Religion  to  an  illusion.  For  in  the  language 
of  his  philosophy  every  object  of  experience  is  '  appear- 
ance,' so  that  it  is  in  its  appearances  that  the  Absolute 
Reahty  lives,  moves,  and  has  its  being.  Religion  can, 
I  think,  have  no  interest  in  maintaining  that  it  can  estab- 
lish communication  with  a  Reality  which  does  not  appear  ; 
and  certainly  the  Christian  Religion,  which  is  committed 
to  the  doctrine  of  a  Logos,  which  was  in  the  beginning 
with  God,  and  was  God, 7  cannot  deny  appearance  to  be 
essential  to  ultimate  Reality. 

Thus  with  Mr.  Bradley's  philosophy  of  Religion  indeed, 
especially  as  it  has  found  its  latest  expression  in  the 
chapter  '  On  God  and  the  Absolute  '  in  his  Essays  on 
Truth  and  Reality,  I  should,  for  my  own  part  at  any  rate, 
feel  that  I  am  in  essential  agreement.  Nevertheless 
certain  doubts  of  its  complete  adequacy  remain  in  my 
mind.     The  nature  of  these  will  appear  from  some  further 

7  John  i.   I. 


140  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

comments  which  I  propose  to  offer  upon  it,  in  the  course 
of  which  I  shall  also  point  out  what  I  take  to  be  the  relation 
of  Mr.  Bradley's  philosophy  of  rehgion  to  that  of  Mr. 
Bosanquet.  For,  near  to  one  another  as  these  two  eminent 
thinkers  are,  not  only  in  their  general  view  of  the  world 
but  also  in  the  terms  which  they  employ  in  speaking  of 
the  relation  of  Rehgion  to  the  Absolute  Experience,  yet 
I  think  that  on  a  near  inspection  there  will  be  found  to 
be  between  their  respective  attitudes  toward  Rehgion 
an  important  difference  which  will  repay  our  study. 
These  discussions  will  bring  us  to  close  quarters  with 
the  antithesis  of  Divine  Immanence  and  Divine  Trans- 
cendence which  has  played  a  considerable  part  in  recent 
theology,  and  to  which  I  promised  in  my  first  Lecture 
that  I  would  call  attention. 

I  will  begin  the  observations  which  I  wish  to  make  on 
Mr.  Bradley's  philosophy  of  Rehgion  by  quoting  the 
following  passage  from  the  essay  '  On  God  and  the  Abso- 
lute,' to  which  I  have  just  referred. 

"  Whatever  ideas,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  "  really  are 
required  in  practice  by  the  highest  rehgion  are  true.  In 
my  judgement  their  truth  is  not  contradicted  by  meta- 
physics, so  long  only  as  they  will  not  offer  themselves 
as  satisfying  our  last  intellectual  demands.  And  exactly 
how  reUgious  truths  are  to  be  in  the  end  supplemented 
and  corrected,  I  would  repeat  that,  as  I  understand  the 
matter,  metaphysics  cannot  say.  Within  the  outline 
which  it  takes  for  real  there  is  room  for  all  truth  and  all 
truth  assuredly  is  completed.  But  the  answer  in  concrete 
detail  is  beyond  the  finite  intellect,  and  is  even  beyond 
any  mere  understanding,"  ^ 

I  do  not  think  there  is  anything  here  said  with  which 

8  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  433. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF  A   FINITE   GOD        141 

I  should  not  agree.  If  any  objection  can  be  taken  to 
Mr.  Bradley's  statement,  it  would  not  come,  I  take  it, 
from  the  theologians  who  insist  on  what  they  call  the 
'  personality  of  God '  as  a  religious  truth,  and  whose 
position,  in  the  context  of  the  passage  I  have  quoted, 
Mr.  Bradley  is  criticizing.  They  would  be  probably  in 
most  cases  quite  wilhng  to  admit  that  in  our  most  inti- 
mate communion  with  God  our  vision  of  him  must  still  be 
proportioned  to  the  measures  of  our  creaturely  nature, 
which,  however  highly  exalted,  must  remain  creaturely 
and  other  than  the  uncreated  nature.  They  would,  at 
least  if  they  were  Christian  theologians,  find  no  fault 
with  the  wonderful  stanzas  with  which  the  Paradise 
of  Dante  ends  ;  yet  whoever  will  place  the  words  of  Mr. 
Bradley  which  I  have  just  quoted  by  the  side  of  those 
stanzas  will,  I  am  convinced,  be  surprised  to  see  how 
closely  the  thought  of  the  philosopher  echoes  that  of 
the  great  Christian  poet : — 

Veder  voleva,  come  si  convenne 
L'imago  al  cerchi6,  e  come  vi  s'indova.9 

In  my  third  Lecture,  when  I  was  dealing  with  the  history 
of  the  application  of  the  word  '  person  '  to  God,  I  showed 
that  this  application  was  first  made  in  the  theology  of 
Catholic  Christianity,  wherein  the  personal  communion 
with  God  which  found  expression  in  the  recorded  language 
of  a  historical  person,  Jesus  Christ,  was  affirmed  to  belong 
to  the  eternal  nature  ot  the  Supreme  Being.  This  being 
so,  the  problem  which  Dante  has  in  mind  in  the  lines 
which  I  have  just  quoted,  the  problem  traditionally 
known  as  that  of  the  two  natures  in  Christ,  involves  the 
problem  which  Mr.  Bradley  is  considering  in  the  passage 
9  Par  ad.  xxxiii.    137-8. 


142  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

I  cited  above.  So  far  as  the  demand  that  God  should 
be  '  personal  '  is  a  genuinely  religious  demand,  it  is  the 
demand  for  an  assurance  that  the  possibiHty  of  such  a 
relation  to  God  as  is  exemplified  in  the  Godward  attitude 
of  Jesus  is  no  vain  dream,  but  is  rooted  in  the  funda- 
mental structure  of  ultimate  Reality. 

Dante  could  not  see  what  he  wished  without  a  flash 
of  supernatural  illumination  : — 

Ma  non  eran  da  cio  le  propice  penne 
Se  non  che  la  mia  mente  fu  percossa 
Da  un  fulgore,  in  che  sua  voglia  vcnnc." 

So,  too,  Mr.  Bradley  ends  his  essay  on  God  and  the 
Absolute  with  the  confession  that  we  need  a  new  religion, 
which  philosophy  has  it  not  in  its  power  to  supply,  though 
he  doubts  whether  any  religious  doctrine  will  be  "  able 
in  the  end  to  meet  our  metaphysical  requirement  of 
ultimate  consistency."  "  What  we  want  is  "  a  religious 
beUef  founded  otherwise  than  on  metaphysics,  and  a 
metaphysics  able  in  some  sense  to  justify  that  creed." 
Whether  a  '  new '  religion  is  really  required  for  such 
justification  of  this  demand,  or  only  a  more  thorough 
and  courageous  acceptance  of  an  old  one  is  a  matter  on 
which  much  might  be  said,  but  which  cannot  be  discussed 
here  :  for  apologetic  is  not  the  business  of  a  Gifford 
Lecturer. 

I  have  already  observed  that  there  seems  to  me  to  be 
a  certain  difference  in  the  attitudes  towards  Religion 
taken  up  by  Mr.  Bradley  and  Mr.  Bosanquet  respectively, 
and  have  suggested  that  we  should  find  it  instructive  to 
note   where   it  lies.     Mr.   Bosanquet  docs,  unless   I   mis- 

'•  Parad.   xxxiii.    1 39-41. 

"  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  446. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   A   FINITE   GOD        143 

construe  him  greatly,  conceive  it  possible  to  make  the 
Absolute  the  object  of  religious  devotion.  In  this  I 
should  so  far  be  in  sympathy  with  him  that  I  should  even 
insist  that  the  object  of  rehgious  devotion  cannot,  when 
once  the  question  is  raised,  be  held  to  be  less  than  the 
Ultimate  Realit}'."  But  Mr.  Bradley  seems  to  imply  that, 
not  only  for  the  less  philosophical,  but  even  for  those 
who  share  his  own  metaphysical  convictions,  there  is  still 
room  for  an  '  exoteric  '  religion  which  may  involve  the 
consciousness  of  a  personal  God.  His  words  suggest 
that  the  absence  of  a  generally  recognized  religion  which 
might  fill  this  place  without  being  in  flagrant  contradic- 
tion with  those  convictions  is  to  him  a  matter  for  regret. 
How  far  I  am  right  in  interpreting  his  attitude  thus  I 
am  not  sure.  But  should  it  turn  out  thus,  then  I  should 
find  myself  more  in  sympathy  with  his  philosophy  of 
religion  than  with  Mr.  Bosanquet's,  in  so  far  as  it 
evinces  a  keener  perception  of  the  permanent  and  universal 
value  of  elements  in  the  rehgious  consciousness,  with 
which  it  appears  to  Mr.  Bosanquet,  unless  I  greatly 
mistake  his  meaning,  comparatively  easy  to  dispense ; 
and  consequently  a  greater  sense  of  the  grave  loss  which 
may  attend  the  inevitable  depreciation  of  these  in  view 
of  their  failure,  in  the  judgment  of  both  philosophers 
alike,  to  satisfy  the  metaphysical  test  for  admission  to 
a  place  in  the  system  of  ultimate  truth.  A  kindred 
difference  between  the  two  thinkers  in  their  respective 

'*  I  do  not  know  how  far  this  impression  may  be  due  to  the  fact 
mentioned  by  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  the  Preface  to  hidividuality  and 
Value  (p.  vii)  that  in  his  first  course  of  Gifford  Lectures  he  has 
not  "  sharply  distinguished  between  God  and  the  Absolute."  But 
I  think  that  he  could  scarcely  have  found  it  possible  to  forbear 
doing  so  were  there  not  some  truth  in  what  I  have  said  of  his 
attitude  in  the  text. 


144  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

attitudes  toward  the  question  of  a  future  life  will  engage 
our  attention  when  I  come,  as  I  hope  to  come  in  my 
second  course  of  Lectures,  to  the  consideration  of  that 
question  as  part  of  the  problem  of  finite  personality. 

According  to  Mr.  Bradley  the  "  belief  in  God  as  a 
separate  individual  "  seems  to  many  (though  not  to  all) 
religious  minds  to  be  required  for  practical  religion. 
"  Where  truly  that  belief  is  so  required,"  he  says,  "  I 
can  accept  it  as  justified  and  true  ;  but  only  if  it  is  supple- 
mented by  other  beliefs  which  really  contradict  it."  ^3 
With  this  statement,  again,  I  should  certainly  have  no 
quarrel ;  for  I  am  sure  that  the  consciousness  of  standing 
in  a  personal  relation  towards  God,  however  we  may 
picture  it,  is  never,  at  any  rate  where  it  is  the  form  of 
a  genuine  experience,  the  consciousness  of  standing  in 
such  a  relation  towards  a  '  separate  '  individual.  There 
is  ever  present  a  sense  at  least  of  God's  privity  to  the 
thoughts  and  intents  of  our  hearts  which  we  could  not 
admit  in  the  case  of  a  truly  '  separate  individual '  as 
tolerable,  even  if  conceivable. ^ 4  In  Mr.  Bradley's  treat- 
ment of  the  subject  there  sometimes  seems  to  be  too  Uttle 
distinction  drawn  ^5  between  two  contrasts  :  the  contrast 
of  a '  personal  God '  with  the  Absolute — that  is,  the  ultimate 
system  of  Reality,  within  which  God  and  his  worshipper 
and  everything  else  that  is  real  must  be  embraced — and 
the  contrast  of  a  God  personally  distinct  from  his  wor- 
shipper with  a  God  who  is  '  the  indwelling  Life  and  Mind 
and  the  inspiring  Love  '  ^^  both  of  the  universe  which  he 
makes  and  sustains  and  also  of  the  finite  soul.     But  the 


'3  See  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  436. 

'4  See  Problems  in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  pp.  147-8. 

>5  See,  however,  p.  436  n. 

''  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  436. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  A  FINITE  GOD       145 

two  contrasts  are  not,  I  think,  the  same  contrast,  and 
should  be  discussed  separately. 

For  of  the  former  contrast  it  seems  sufficient  to  say 
that  in  no  religion  that  I  know  of  is  the  nature  of  God 
held  to  be  exhausted  in  a  personal  relation  to  his  wor- 
shipper. Religion  may  demand  that  this  relation  be 
regarded  not  as  merely  figurative  or  illusory,  but  as  real, 
and  as  no  less  real  than  the  worshipper's  own  personahty 
or  than  his  personal  relations  with  his  fellow-men  ;  this, 
however,  is  not  to  say  that  there  is  in  God  nothing  beyond 
his  relations  to  us.  Indeed,  to  suppose  this  would  surely 
be  highly  unsatisfactory  to  the  religious  emotions,  which, 
on  the  other  hand,  respond  readily  to  that  profound  saying 
of  Anselm  ^7  that  God  is  not  only  that  than  which  no 
greater  can  be  conceived,  but  is  also  greater  than  anything 
which  can  be  conceived.  ^8  *'  jf  j  ^m  forced  to  take 
reality,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  "  as  having  .  .  .  only  one 
sense  .  .  .  nothing  to  me  in  this  sense  is  real  except  the 
Universe  as  a  whole  :  for  I  cannot  take  God  as  including 

'7  Proshgion,  c.  15. 

'*  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  traditional  theology  of  Christendom 
has  described  God  as  wholly  personal  (for  there  is  no  God  beside 
the  three  persons  of  the  Trinity),  but  has  not  treated  personahty 
as  the  primary  attribute  of  the  Supreme  Being.  I  do  not  think 
that  it  can  be  said  of  any  standard  expression  of  this  theology, 
whatever  be  the  case  with  certain  modem  Christian  theologians, 
that  it  "  takes  personahty  as  being  the  last  word  about  the  Universe  " 
(see  Bradley,  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  451).  I  venture  to  think  that 
Mr.  Bradley's  observation  about  '  polytheism  '  on  p.  436  confirms 
a  suspicion  to  which  other  passages  in  his  writings  have  given 
occasion,  that  he  has  allowed  a  certain  impatience  to  hinder  him 
from  doing  justice  to  the  real  significance  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity.  I  do  not  of  course  at  all  suggest  that,  had  this  not  been 
so,  he  would  have  found  it  solve  all  difficulties  ;  and  probably  the 
inconsiderate  assertions  of  certain  theologians  to  this  efiect  have 
had  a  powerful  influence  in  deterring  him  from  a  more  careful 
study  of  it. 


146  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

or  as  equivalent  to  the  whole  Universe.  .  .  .  But  if  .  .  . 
I  am  allowed  to  hold  degrees  in  reahty  .  .  .  God  to  me 
is  now  so  much  more  real  than  you  or  myself  that  to 
compare  God's  reality  with  ours  would  be  ridiculous."  ^9 
I  will  confess  that,  in  the  sense  in  which  we  may  rightly 
speak  of  degrees  of  reality,  and  of  God's  reality  being 
greater  than  yours  or  mine,  I  should  not  attribute  a 
higher  degree  of  reality  to  the  "  Universe  as  a  whole  "  than 
to  God  ;  for  it  is,  as  I  take  it,  only  in  God  that  the  Universe 
is  a  whole.  I  will  content  myself  with  saying  that  among 
the  ideas  which  (to  quote  Mr.  Bradley)  "  are  required 
to  satisfy  the  interest  and  claim  "  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, and  therefore  must  be  true,  I  am  compelled 
to  reckon  that  of  the  ultimate  reahty  of  its  object ;  but 
that  this  does  not  for  me  mean  that  in  the  personal  relation 
to  that  object,  which  is  another  '  idea  '  (if  we  are  to  use 
this  phraseology)  required  for  the  same  purpose,  we 
apprehend  the  whole  of  its  nature  ;  nor  is  it,  I  believe, 
an  '  idea  '  in  any  way  required  by  the  religious  conscious- 
ness that  we  do  so  apprehend  it. 

I  pass  to  the  other  contrast,  that  between  a  '  separate 
individual '  and  an  indweUing  Spirit.  As  I  said  before, 
this  contrast  seems  to  be  insufficiently  discriminated  by 
Mr.  Bradley  from  that  last  mentioned.  He  does,  indeed, 
recognize  that  they  are  distinct  by  pointing  out  that 
even  a  '  higher  inclusive  will '  than  the  will  of  an  individual 
human  being,  if  it  be  one  '  which  can  say  "  I  "  to  itself,' 
such  as  that  of  the  State  or  of  some  vaster  society  (no 
matter  how  vast  we  imagine  it)  must  still  be  "  finite."  20 
It  seems  to  be  implied  in  this  remark  that  the  Absolute 
could  not  say  '  I  '  to  itself ;  no  doubt  because  the  Absolute 
is  not  confronted  by  any  thing  that  is  not  itself.  I  have 
'9  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  448,  »<>  Ibid.,  p.  436  n. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF  A   FINITE   GOD        147 

already  reminded  you  ^^  of  Lotze's  criticism  of  this  implied 
view.  My  own  criticism  would  take  a  somewhat  different 
form,  but  I  will  reserve  it  till  a  later  and  more  constructive 
stage  of  my  argument.  But  certainly  there  is  nothing 
in  the  incompatibility  of  '  personality '  with  absolute 
reaUty,  even  though  we  should  admit  this,  which  involves 
the  incompatibihty  of  '  personality  '  with  what  is  nowa- 
days often  called  '  immanence.'  That  there  is  an  essential 
contradiction  between  the  two  I  do  not  admit,  and  should 
appeal  with  confidence  in  support  of  my  contention  to 
the  religious  consciousness,  which,  so  long  as  the  nature 
of  the  absolute  or  ultimate  Reality  is  reserved  for  the 
cognizance  of  metaphysics,  Mr.  Bradley  admits  to  be 
in  religious  questions  the  final  court  of  appeal.  I  do 
not  think  that  in  religion  God  is  ever  regarded  as  having 
a  purely  exclusive  or  separate  personality ;  wherever  he 
is  regarded  as  a  person,  this  is  not  felt  to  exclude  his 
indwelling.  I  could  call  here  as  a  witness  Mr.  Wells, 
who  in  his  recent  summons  to  thinking  men  to  adopt 
his  new  religion,  insists  that  its  God  must  be  a  person 
without  it  ever  occurring  to  him  that  this  must  exclude 
his  indwelling  in  his  worshippers.  But  I  would  prefer 
to  point  out  that  to  no  one  who  has  been  brought  up 
to  think  of  the  Holy  Spirit  as  a  Person  should  it  seem 
strange  to  regard  the  notion  of  a  '  person  '  and  that  of 
an  '  indwelling  spirit '  as  mutually  consistent. 

Of  course  it  is  not  only  in  religion  that  we  find  our- 
selves in  a  difficulty,  if  we  attempt  to  regard  the  complete 
mutual  exclusiveness  of  human  souls  "  each  in  his  hidden 
sphere    of    joy    or    woe  "22  as    of   the    very    essence   of 

»i  See  supra,  Lect.  IV.  p.  106. 

"  Keble,  Christian    Year,  Twenty-fourth  Sunday  after  Trinity: 

'  Each  in  his  hidden  sphere  of  joy  or  woe. 
Our  hermit  spirits  dwell  and  range  apart.' 


148  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

personality.  Nowhere  is  there  a  fuller  consciousness  of 
the  Personality  and  of  the  distinction  from  one  another 
of  the  persons  concerned  than  there  is  in  love.  Yet  just 
here,  in  proportion  to  the  greatness  and  the  depth  of 
the  love,  such  mutual  exclusiveness  is  transcended  and 
done  away. 

It  would  be  of  course  absurd  to  suppose  that  this 
thought  is  unfamiUar  to  Mr.  Bradley.  Few  philosophers 
have  shown  themselves  more  keenly  aUve  to  the  lessons 
to  be  drawn  from  this  region  of  experience.  Never 
unregardful  of  the  significance  of  poetry  for  metaphysic, 
he  has  lately  told  us  that  he  finds  himself  "  now  taking 
more  and  more  as  hteral  fact  "  what  he  used  in  his  youth 
"  to  admire  and  love  as  poetry."  23  It  is  not  for  lack  of 
appreciation  of  the  importance  of  the  experiences  of 
saint  or  lover  that  he  would  regard  the  paradox  of  those 
experiences  as  proving  their  failure  to  make  good  a  claim 
to  ultimate  reahty.  It  is  rather  because  of  that  principle 
of  his  logic  which  has  led  him  to  call  all  '  relations  '  un- 
intelligible because  they  are  relations  and  not  something 
else.  If  one  is  not  convinced  by  his  reasoning  upon  that 
subject,  one  may  venture  also  to  deny  that  any  incon- 
sistency or  contradiction  is  involved  in  saying  that  in 
Religion  we  have  communion  with  a  personahty  which 
is  more  perfect  than  our  own,  just  because  our  person- 
alities do  not  exclude  it  as  the  personality  of  any  one 
of  us  excludes  that  of  any  other  of  our  fellow-men. 

The  '  immanence  '  of  God,  if  we  are  to  use  this  now 
famiUar  expression,  is  certainly  a  doctrine  with  which 
the  religious  consciousness  cannot  dispense.  But  the 
same  is,  to  my  mind,  true  of  the  complementary  doctrine 
of  his  '  transcendence.'  It  is  necessary,  however,  to 
»3  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  468  n. 


THE  DOCTRINE   OF  A  FINITE   GOD        149 

scrutinize    somewhat    more    closely    the    sense    in    which 
this  term  is  used. 

There  is  a  transition  of  thought — and,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  a  fallacious  transition  of  thought — in  the  philosophy 
of  Herbert  Spencer  of  which  we  are  reminded  by  an 
unfortunate  ambiguity  sometimes  to  be  found  in  dis- 
cussions of  Divine  Transcendence.  Spencer  starts,  as  is 
well  known,  from  the  position  which  is  called  Realism. 
He  holds  that  the  onus  of  proof  hes  upon  any  one  who 
denies  to  physical  objects  a  reality  independent  of  any 
perception  or  consciousness  of  them  by  human  or  other 
minds.  But  he  ends  by  finding  the  ultimate  and  genuine 
reality  of  things  to  be  unknowable  by  any  mind  what- 
soever. Here  what  begins  by  being  '  outside  of '  or 
'  external  to  '  our  minds,  in  the  sense  of  having  an  exist- 
ence independently  of  our  thinking  or  being  aware  of  it, 
gradually  shps  into  being  '  out  of  mind  '  in  the  sense 
which  that  expression  bears  in  the  proverbial  phrase 
'out  of  sight  out  of  mind,'  where  it  means  in  fact  that 
we  do  not  think  of  it  at  all.  But  what  is  thus  maintained 
at  the  end  is  just  the  reverse  of  what  was  maintained 
at  the  beginning.  The  physical  world  is  not  an  idea  in 
our  minds  ;  it  is  that  which  we  perceive,  of  which  we 
think.  Our  perception,  our  consciousness  gives  itself 
out,  so  to  speak,  as  perception  and  consciousness  of  a 
reaUty  which,  whether  ultimately  independent  of  mind 
or  no,  is  at  least  independent  of  the  act  of  perception 
or  consciousness  of  it,  since  this  act  presupposes  it. 
Such  is  the  first  position,  the  position  of  Realism.  On 
the  other  hand,  according  to  the  final  position,  that  of 
Agnosticism  as  we  may  call  it,  the  physical  world  is 
really  something  of  which  we  can  never  be  aware  as  it 
really  is  ;  what  we  are  aware  of  is  always  something  else 


150  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

than  what  it  really  is  ;  for  it  is  merely  a  '  phenomenon  ' 
which,  as  it  appears,  is  not  independent  of  our  con- 
sciousness. 

I  do  not  now  propose  to  criticize  the  transition  of  thought 
here  involved,  but  only  to  show  that  what  is  in  principle 
the  same  transition  has  introduced  a  parallel  difficulty 
into  theology.  When  God's  transcendence  is  opposed  to 
his  immanence,  we  sometimes  begin  by  meaning  merely 
that  in  our  religion  we  have  to  do  with  something  more 
than  ideas  or  emotions  of  our  own,  which,  whatever  value 
or  practical  efficacy  they  may  possess,  are  not  ideas  of 
anything  or  emotions  excited  hy  anything  beyond  our  own 
individual  or  racial  life.  We  intend  to  deny  that,  so  far 
as  we  speak  of  a  God  or  gods,  we  are  merely  personifying 
certain  moods  or  emotions,  as  poets  personify  passions 
or  virtues,  to  which  they  yet  do  not  by  any  means  intend 
us  to  ascribe  an  independent  being  like  that  of  another 
real  person,  as  real  as  ourselves.  But  we  must  be  careful 
not  to  let  this  kind  of  transcendence  pass  over  under  our 
hands,  as  it  were,  into  a  transcendence  which  severs  God 
altogether  from  the  religious  consciousness,  in  and  through 
which  alone  we  know  him,  and  treats  him  as  an  unutterable 
mystery,  of  which  we  can  say  nothing  that  is  true.  A 
God  thus  transcendent  has  nothing  to  do  with  Religion. 
That  sense  of  something  beyond  the  reach  of  scientific 
knowledge,  in  which  alone  Herbert  Spencer  could  recognize 
a  legitimate  form  of  religious  consciousness,24  can  be  called 
Religion  at  all  only  in  virtue  of  that  last  rag  of  intelligi- 
bility which  is  left  to  the  Unknowable,  when  we  describe 
it  as  the  ultimate  ground  of  all  that  we  can  know,  and 
are  (doubtless  in  company  with  Spencer  himself)  stirred  as 

»4  See  First  Principles,  cc.  2,  5  ;    see  esp.  p.  113  ;   Ecclesiastical 
Institutions,  c.  16  ;  see  esp.  pp   841  ff. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF  A   FINITE  GOD        151 

we  think  of  this  by  the  characteristically  religious  emotion 
of  solemn  awe. 

I  said  just  now  that  only  in  and  through  the  religious 
consciousness  do  we  know  God  ;  and  I  think  that  a  dis- 
cussion of  this  phrase,  the  like  of  which  is  frequently  to 
be  found  in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Bradley,  will  assist  us 
in  defining  the  meaning  of  the  transcendence  which,  if 
I  am  not  mistaken,  is  always  ascribed  to  God  in  Rehgion, 
and  that  even  where  God  cannot  be  said  to  be  conceived 
as  personal. 

Si  magna  licet  componcre  parvis,   I  will  here  illustrate 
this  matter  of  our  knowledge  of  God  from  our  knowledge 
of  a  poet  or  of  a  musical  composer — of  Shakespeare,  for 
instance,  or  of  Beethoven.     Would  it  not  be  true  to  say 
that  we    could    only    know    Shakespeare    as    a   poet   or 
Beethoven   as   a   musician   in   and   through   our   poetical 
or    musical    experience  ?     Had    we    no    appreciation    for 
poetry,  no  ear  for  music,  we  could  know  nothing  of  Shake- 
speare as  poet  or  of  Beethoven  as  musician.     We  might 
know    a  number  of  facts  about  them — the  dates  of  the 
chief  events  in  their  life,  of  the  editions  of  their  works, 
or  what    not — we  might  even  be  learned  in  their  auto- 
graphs or  in  their  bibliography,  but,  if  their  poetry  or 
music  waked  in  us  no  emotions,  we  should  still  be  strangers 
to  the  poet  or  the  musician.     Moreover,  our  knowledge 
of  the  poet  or  musician  could  never  go  beyond  our  appre- 
ciation of  his   work  ;   for  only  by   an   aesthetic   activity, 
secondary  no  doubt  and  stimulated  in  us  from  without, 
but  still  one  which  echoes,  as  it  were,  the  mightier  activity 
of  the    creative    mind  whose  works    we    study,  can  we 
understand  at  all  a  work  of  art.     Yet  we  know  that  this 
activity  is  not  the  primary  activity  of  creation,  that  it 
is  stimulated  by  and  dimly  echoes  another  ;  we  can  make 


152  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

no  mistake  about  that.  It  is  easy  to  make  the  apphca- 
tion  of  the  parable.  It  is  true  to  say  that  only  in  and 
through  a  religious  experience  have  we  any  knowledge 
of  God  ;  what  are  called  '  arguments  for  the  existence 
of  God  '  will  never  prove  to  those  who  lack  such  an  expe- 
rience the  existence  of  God,  but  only  at  most  the  need  of 
assuming,  in  order  to  account  for  our  experiences  other 
than  religious,  a  designing  Mind,  or  a  Necessary  Being, 
or  an  Absolute  Reality.  But  the  religious  experience  is 
ever  an  experience  of  a  Reality  distinct  from  and  unex- 
hausted in  the  experience  as  mine.  And  where  there  is 
religious  experience  present,  the  arguments  which  apart 
from  it  prove  the  existence  of  something  which  is  yet 
not  God  are  informed  with  a  new  significance. 

No  doubt  here  as  elsewhere  the  parable  will  fail  at 
certain  points.  The  aesthetic  activity  by  means  of  which 
we  appreciate  a  work  of  art,  though  stimulated  by  that 
work,  is  initiated  by  ourselves  in  each  particular  case, 
and  not  by  the  personality  of  the  artist,  the  existence 
of  which  is  notwithstanding  presupposed  in  the  whole 
process.  But,  on  the  higher  level  of  religious  experience, 
the  initiation  of  our  experience  in  every  case  is  referred 
to  its  object.  Thus,  to  take  an  example,  St.  Paul,  when 
he  speaks  of  his  converts  as  having  known  God,  corrects 
himself  at  once — "  or  rather  are  known  of  God."  ^5  Again, 
there  are  facts  about  Shakespeare  and  Beethoven  which 
may  be  said  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  their  art.  Not 
only  do  such  facts  fail  by  themselves  to  help  us  towards 
the  knowledge  of  what  the  men  to  whom  they  relate  are 
as  artists,  but,  if  we  know  those  men  as  artists  through 
appreciation  of  their  art,  this  knowledge  of  them  as  artists 
throws  no  light  upon   these  facts,   which  yet  no   doubt 

»5  Gal.  iv.  9. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  A  FINITE  GOD        153 

may  come  to  be  interesting  as  associated  with  men  who 
have  become  so  much  to  us  in  other  ways.  But,  on  the 
higher  levels  of  ReUgion  at  any  rate,  we  cannot  regard 
anything  as  thus  disconnected  from  God.  To  the  religious 
man  the  experiences  which  cannot  bring  the  irreligious  to 
God  are  transfigured  by  his  rehgion.  The  heavens,  which 
the  irrehgious  astronomer  can  sweep  with  his  telescope 
and  find  no  God  there,  are  to  the  rehgious  man  teUing 
his  glory  and  showing  his  handiwork. ^^  He  may  not  be 
able  to  see  God  in  all  things,  but  he  cannot  but  believe 
him  to  be  there.  The  statement,  in  which  recent  phil- 
osophers of  very  various  schools  in  this  country  have 
concurred,  that  '  God  is  not  the  Absolute  '  must,  I  am 
sure,  if  seriously  taken,  make  nonsense  of  Religion  ;  and 
the  reasonings  of  Mr.  Bradley,  though  they  deserve,  hke 
all  that  comes  from  him,  the  greatest  respect  and  attention, 
have  not  convinced  me  that  a  new  religion  could  con- 
ceivably be  found  which  could,  if  it  knew  itself  to  be  the 
neighbour  of  a  metaphysic  that  openly  made  that  state- 
ment, Hve  alongside  of  it  on  any  terms  but  those  of 
declared  hostility. 

So  far  as  concerns  the  demand  of  the  rehgious  con- 
sciousness for  an  immanent  God,  a  demand  on  the  impor- 
tance of  which  I  am  wholly  at  one  with  Mr.  Bradley,  I 
see  nothing  in  this  inconsistent  with  a  demand  for  a  God 
with  whom  we  can  stand  in  personal  relations.  I  would 
express  this  latter  demand  thus  rather  than  as  a  demand 
for  a  '  personal  God.'  For  I  do  not  think  that  Rehgion 
is  concerned  with  the  nature  of  the  divine  self-conscious- 
ness, except  so  far  as  this  may  be  involved  in  the  reahty 
of  our  personal  relations  with  God  :  so  long  as  these  are 
not  regarded  as  figurative  or  illusory,  we  have  no  religious 

»6  Psa.  xix.  I. 


154  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

interest  in  hesitating  to  confess  without  reserve  that 
God's  thoughts  are  not  as  our  thoughts  nor  his  ways  as 
our  ways. 2 7 

Again,  I  am  convinced  that  ReHgion  cannot,  when 
once  it  has  reached  the  stage  at  which  the  question  has 
become  intelligible,  give  any  but  an  affirmative  answer 
to  the  question  whether  God  is  the  Absolute,  I  see  no 
more,  if  also  no  less,  difficulty  in  allowing  that  the  Absolute 
may  be  the  object  of  personal  religious  devotion  than  in 
allowing  that  the  Absolute  may  be  the  object  of  meta- 
physical speculation  ;  and  I  should  say  that  the  exist- 
ence of  Rehgion  (in  some  of  its  highest  manifestations), 
and  the  existence  of  Philosophy  prove  that  the  Absolute 
can  be,  because  it  is,  both  the  one  and  the  other. 

But,  just  because  neither  Religion  nor  Philosophy  can 
consent  to  admit  itself  to  be  an  illusion,  both  are  bound 
to  recognize  that  the  activity  in  which  the  Absolute  is 
known  or  worshipped  is  not  and  cannot  be  something 
which  falls  outside  of  the  Absolute,  for  if  it  were  this,  the 
Absolute  would  not  be  the  Absolute.  Hence,  philosophy 
can  use  in  the  person  of  Apollo  those  words  of  the  hymn 
which  Shelley  puts  into  his  mouth  : — 


I  am  the  eye  with  which  the  universe 
Beholds  itself  and  knows  itself  divine. *8 


And  Rehgion — even,  and  especially,  that  very  religion 
by  which  the  representation  of  divine  worship  as  a  per- 
sonal relation  has  been  most  seriously  taken — can  find 
itself  driven  to  recognize  in  the  Spirit  which  expresses 
itself   in  the  worshipper's  personal  love  and  devotion  to 

'7  Isa.  Iv.  8.     See  Bradley,  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  436  «. 
-*  Shelley,   Hymn  of  Apollo. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  A  FINITE  GOD        155 

God  as  to  a  Father  nothing  less  than  an  integral  factor 
in  the  very  life  of  God  himself. 

This  is  by  no  means,  however,  as  perhaps  has  some- 
times been  too  hastily  assumed,  an  end  of  our  difficulties. 
If  our  worship  of  God  is  regarded  as  a  divine  activity, 
where  is  there  room  for  that  sense  of  infinite  distance 
between  the  worshipper  and  that  which  he  worships 
which  has  no  doubt  predominated  in  certain  forms  of 
religion  more  than  in  others — I  suppose  that  Islam  stands 
especially  for  it  among  the  great  historical  faiths — but 
which  seems  to  have  a  place  in  all  higher  religion,  and  may 
give  even  to  the  profoundest  consciousness  of  union 
with  God  its  keenest  poignancy,  as  the  adoring  soul 
measures  by  her  own  infinite  unworthiness  the  infinite 
love  of  the  divine  Bridegroom,  who  has  so  joined  her  to 
himself  that  she  and  he  are  no  more  twain  but  one  spirit  ?  29 

I  shall  pass  in  the  next  Lecture  to  the  consideration 
of  the  problem  thus  presented  to  us.  We  may  call  it 
the  problem  of  Creation.  For  the  term  '  creation  '  calls 
up  the  thought  of  the  origination  by  God  of  something 
outside  of  himself  and  of  quite  different  nature  ;  it  is 
just  in  virtue  of  this  thought  that  it  differs  from  other 
metaphors  such  as  those  of  '  procreation  '  or  '  emanation  ' 
which  suggest  rather  a  unity  of  substance  between  the 
produced  and  the  producer.  Is  there,  then,  I  shall  go 
on  next  time  to  inquire,  any  reason  for  retaining  the 
metaphor  of  'creation,'  as  expressing  something  which  the 
other  metaphors  do  not  express,  but  which  needs  ex- 
pressing, or  should  we  do  well  to  discard  it  as  a  relic  of 
anthropomorphic  mythology,  and  one  perhaps  fraught 
with  danger  to  a  right  estimate  of  our  spiritual  dignity  ? 
It  is  to  this  problem  that  we  must  now  turn. 
'9  See  I  Cor.  vi.  17. 

L 


LECTURE  VII 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  CREATION 

At  the  end  of  my  last  Lecture  I  said  that  our  next  subject 
would  be  the  problem  of  Creation ;  not,  however,  the 
problem  of  the  creation  of  the  material  universe,  but 
that  of  the  creation  of  spiritual  beings.  We  ^^•ere  to 
ask  whether  the  relation  of  our  spirits  to  God  is  better 
described  as  creation  or  as  generation  or  emanation.  All 
such  phrases,  as  used  in  this  connection,  of  course  involve 
metaphor ;  the  question  is  which  of  these  metaphors 
will  best  express  what  we  want  to  express.  The  out- 
standing distinction  is  that  between  a  metaphor  which, 
Uke  that  of  creation,  lays  stress  on  the  difference  of  nature 
between  God  and  our  own  spirits,  whose  relation  to  him 
is  compared  to  the  relation  ot  a  manufactured  article 
to  the  craftsman  who  has  fashioned  it,  and  metaphors 
which  suggest  rather  an  identity  of  nature  such  as  exists 
between  the  child  and  its  parent,  or  the  river  and  the 
spring  from  which  it  flows. 

Scholasticism,  meaning  by  this  name  the  philosophy 
accepted  by  the  Latin  Church  as  providing  a  speculative 
background  for  her  theology  and  a  terminology  in  which 
she  can  approximately  express  it,  has,  I  believe,  been 
compendiously  defined  by  one  of  its  critics  as  the  phil- 
osophy which  denies  the  divinity  of   the  human  spirit.^ 

»  I  owe  the  knowledge  of  this  epigram  to  Prof.  J.  A.  Smith. 

166 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CREATION  157 

The  intention  of  such  a  definition  is  of  course  to  empha- 
size the  difference  between  this  way  of  thinking,  which 
represents  the  activity  of  the  '  finite  spirit '  even  at  its 
highest  and  best  as  still  to  the  end  distinguishable  from 
that  of  God,  and  a  way  of  thinking  which  is  concerned 
to  insist  rather  upon  the  identity  of  human  thought, 
so  far  as  it  is  free  from  error,  with  the  divine.  This 
latter  way  of  thinking  may  be  conveniently  illustrated 
by  the  doctrine  of  Malebranche  that  we  '  see  all  things 
in  God,'  no  less  than  by  the  absolute  idealism  of  Hegel 
and  others  in  more  recent  times  ;  although  Malebranche 
would  no  doubt  have  subscribed  to  theological  propo- 
sitions for  which  the  contrasted  view,  attributed  above 
to  Scholasticism,  has  usually  been  considered  to  afford 
a  more  congenial  setting. 

We  have  in  the  last  Lecture  criticized  the  position 
that  recognition  of  divine  immanence  is  inconsistent  with 
recognition  of  divine  personality.  The  stress  laid  by  such 
representatives  of  idealism  as  I  have  just  mentioned  on 
the  identity  of  our  spiritual  nature  with  the  divine  tends 
— though  the  tendency  is  not  always  prominent — to  a 
denial  not  only  of  Divine  Personality  but  of  any  sort  of 
Divine  Transcendence,  except  it  be  that  of  the  part  by 
the  whole.  I  will  take  as  an  emphatic  statement  of  this 
denial  the  following  words  of  an  eminent  thinker  of  the 
present  day,  Signor  Benedetto  Croce.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  this  writer  finds  the  position  of  Hegel,  with  whose 
general  view  he  is  much  in  sympathy,  unsatisfactory  in 
that  he  has  left  an  opening  for  an  interpretation  of  his 
teaching  which  would  make  it  lend  support  to  faith  in 
a  God  who  should  not  be  merely  immanent  in  nature 
and  man.  "  We  can  well  think  God,"  says  Signor  Croce, 
"  in  nature  and  man    Deus  in  nobis  et  nos,  but  certainly 


158  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

not  a  God  outside  or  prior  to  nature."  ^  I  am  not  sure 
that  the  expressions  '  outside  '  and  '  prior  '  here,  with 
their  impUcation  that  they  express  the  only  possible 
alternatives  to  Deus  in  nobis  et  nos,  do  not  beg  certain 
important  questions  ;  but  I  will  not  dispute  about  this ; 
I  will  only  take  the  sentence,  as  I  think  it  is  meant,  for 
an  uncompromising  repudiation  of  Divine  Transcendence 
in  any  form,  unless  indeed  it  be  merely  in  that  of  trans- 
cendence of  the  part  by  the  whole.  The  Italian  phil- 
osopher does  not  shrink  from  the  consequences  of  such 
a  repudiation.  For  we  find  him  expressly  rejecting  the 
claim  of  Religion  to  stand  by  the  side  of  Art,  Philosophy, 
Natural  Science,  and  Mathematics  as  an  independent  and 
permanent  form  of  the  theoretical  activity  of  Spirit. 
It  is,  he  tells  us,  to  be  resolved  into  Philosophy  3 ;  and 
Signor  Croce  is  at  pains  to  make  it  clear  that  this  means 
for  him  something  quite  different  from  the  resolution 
of  Philosophy  into  Religion. 

This  view  of  Rehgion  as  in  fact  a  rudimentary  form  of 
Philosophy  certainly  follows  naturally  enough  from  the 
repudiation  of  divine  transcendence.  But  it  is  as  impos- 
sible for  those  who  know  from  within  what  Religion  is 
to  admit  this  view  of  it  as  it  would  be  for  a  poet  to  see 
in  his  art,  or  a  mathematician  in  his  science,  an  activity 
which  will  have  done  its  work  when  it  has  detached  the 
soul  from  absorption  in  sensual  pleasures  or  the  mind 
from  preoccupation  with  particular  sensible  objects  and 
so  prepared  the  way  for  morahty  in  the  one  case  or  for 
metaphysics  in  the  other.     I  am  far  from  denying  the 

»  Saggio  sullo  Hegel  (ed.  1913),  p.  137  (Eng.  tr.  p,  201). 

3  See  The  Task  of  Logic  in  Windelband  and  Ruge's  Encyclo- 
pcBdia  of  the  Philosophical  Sciences,  i.  Eng.  tr,  pp.  210;  cp.  Estetica, 
I.  c.  8  (Eng.  tr.  p.  104). 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   CREATION  159 

intimate  connexion  of  Religion  with  Philosophy,  I  should 
allow  that  it  is  normally  in  connection  with  Religion 
that  the  interest  in  Reality  as  a  whole,  which  is  the  char- 
acteristic interest  of  Philosophy,  first  takes  shape  in  the 
human  mind. 4  I  should  hold  also  that  this  interest  does 
not  obtain  its  full  satisfaction  while  there  is  not  found 
in  the  whole  that  which  Religion  seeks  there — that  is  to 
say,  while  Philosophy  and  Religion  are  at  odds  or  at 
least  not  on  terms  of  friendship  with  one  another.  But 
I  should  insist  that  there  are  data  of  religious  experience 
which,  while  (like  all  data  of  experience)  they  are  the 
concern  of  Philosophy,  and  cannot  rightly  be  withdrawn 
from  her  criticism,  have  a  distinctive  and  specific  char- 
acter, and  cannot  be  adequately  described  as  a  symbolical 
or  mythical  representation  of  ideas  which  Philosophy — 
at  any  rate  in  that  intimate  and  indissoluble  union  with 
History  which  is  ascribed  to  it  in  Signor  Croce's  system — 
possesses  more  securely  in  a  purer  and  truer  form.  Signor 
Croce  is  accustomed,  hke  Mr.  Bradley,  to  use  language 
which  suggests  that  it  is  especially  the  doctrine  of  a. 
'  personal  God  '  which  resists  assimilation  by  Philosophy 
and  must  eventually  be  abandoned  by  any  one  honestly 
desirous  of  understanding  the  world  in  which  he  finds 
himself.  But  I  venture  to  think  that  all  Religion,  and 
not  only  that  which  asserts  or  lays  stress  on  Divine  Per- 
sonality, impHes  an  object  which  is  not  merely  immanent, 
though  it  certainly  also  implies  one  not  merely  transcen- 
dent, and  must  therefore  reject  the  formula  accepted  by 
Signor  Croce,  Dens  in  nobis  et  nos,  when  explicitly  offered  as 
a  sufficient  description  of  that  with  which  it  has  to  do.     It 

4  See  Royce,  Problems  of  Christianity,  ii.  8,  and  my  Group  Theories 
of  Religion,  pp.  i88  f.  Cp.  supra,  Lect.  V,  p.  128;  and  infra,  Lect.  X, 
pp.  214  ft. 


160  GOD  AND  PERSONALITY 

would  be  of  course  desperately  untrue  to  history  to  deny 
that  faiths  which,  in  our  common   way  of  speaking,  may 
be   said  to   lack   a  '  personal    God '  are   notwithstanding 
fully  entitled  to    be  called  forms  of    Religion.     Yet,   as 
the  third   Lecture  of  this  course  will  have  shown,  I  am 
disposed  to  regard  the  express  affirmation   of  Personality 
in  God  as  something  quite  other  than   a  survival  of  the 
crude    anthropomorphism    of    primitive    religion.      It    is 
rather  the  correlative,  whether  we  call  it  the  cause  or  the 
effect  or  both  at  once,  of  a  fuller  development  in  the 
believer  of   a  sense  of  his  own   individual  personality. 
This  is  sometimes  concealed  from  us  by  a  misinterpre- 
tation of  the  fact  that  in  our  part  of  the  world  it  has  often 
been  among  the  highest  minds — great  poets  and  great 
philosophers — and    among    those    of    lesser    calibre    most 
sensitive  to  the  movement  of  thought  around  them — that 
we  observe  a  tendency  to  rebel  against  belief  in  Divine 
Personality  and  to  fall  back  upon  a  conception  of   the 
Object  of  Religion  from  which  this  feature  is  eliminated. 
This  fact  points  to  the  danger  which  lies  for  rehgion 
in  a  onesided  development  of  an  aspect  the  appearance 
of  which  is  itself  a  mark  of  progress.     It  will  be,  I  think, 
found  that  in  India,  where  there  has  been  less  progress 
in  this  direction,  but  where,  on  the  other  hand,  the  com- 
plementary sense  of  divine  indwelling  has  been  less  thrust 
aside  by  the  impact  of  material  interests,  what  may  be 
called  advanced  reUgious  thought  shows  on  the  whole  a 
theistic  bent.     Thus  we  note  in  hberal  movements  origin- 
ating among  men  bred  in  Hinduism  a  tendency  towards 
sympathetic   approximation  to  Unitarian    Christianity — 
that  is  to  say,  to  the  very  form  of  European  rehgion 
which,    as   we   saw,   is   historically   associated   with   the 
doctrine  not  merely  of  Personality  in  God,  but  of  the 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  CREATION  161 

Personality  of  God  ;  or,  to  put  it  another  way,  in  which 
the  ascription  of  Personality  to  God  is  not  blurred  or 
balanced  (whichever  may  be  thought  the  more  appropriate 
word)  by  the  confession  of  three  Persons  within  the  unity 
of  the  Divine  Nature.  There  are  of  course  other  cir- 
cumstances of  a  more  external  kind,  which  have  favoured 
the  approximation  of  which  I  have  been  speaking  ;  but 
I  do  not  think  my  diagnosis  of  its  deeper  significance 
is  wholly  mistaken.  And  if  it  is  not,  it  will  confirm  my 
previous  statement  that  a  certain  tendency  on  the  part 
of  advanced  religious  thought  in  Europe  to  minimize 
the  doctrine  of  Divine  Personality  is  to  be  explained  not 
so  much  by  anything  intellectually  unsatisfying  or  un- 
philosophical  about  the  doctrine  itself  as  by  the  sense 
of  a  need  for  reaffirming  other  elements  in  Religion  which 
are  in  danger  of  disappearance  in  the  hurry  and  com- 
plexity of  our  civilization.  Yet  it  may  be  in  truth  a  no 
less  urgent  necessity  of  our  spiritual  well-being  that  in 
our  religion  the  self-assertive  individual  personality  in 
ourselves  should  shock  and  clash  against  another  per- 
sonaUty  than  that  we  should  be  able  from  time  to  time  to 
go  on  leave,  as  it  were,  from  the  fighting  line  of  our  every- 
day life  into  the  refreshment  of  a  mystic  reverie,  where 
what  makes  up  the  greater  part  of  our  daily  life  is  left 
behind  and  forgotten  as  though  we  had  passed  into 
another  world. 

The  interest  for  our  purpose  of  the  thoughts  suggested 
by  Signor  Croce's  rejection  of  any  transcendence  in  God 
other  than  the  transcendence  of  the  part  by  the  whole, 
together  with  his  consequent  denial  to  Religion  of  any 
independent  place  in  human  life  by  the  side  of  Phil- 
osophy, whereof  it  is,  according  to  this  view,  no  more  than 
an  immature  form,  has  led  us  to  stray  somewhat  aside, 


162  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

though  not,  I  hope,  altogether  unprofitably,  from  the 
main  theme  of  my  present  Lecture,  namely,  the  problem 
of  the  best  metaphor — creation,  generation,  or  emanation 
— to  use  in  expressing  the  relation  of  our  own  spirits  to 
the  Divine  Spirit.  What  has  been  said,  however,  may 
suffice  to  indicate  the  inadequacy  of  such  a  doctrine  of 
God  as  Signor  Croce  gives  us,  which  makes  him  merely 
immanent.  We  shall  do  violence  to  deep-seated  instincts 
of  our  nature  and  deprive  of  significance  a  whole 
range  of  religious  experience  no  less  if  we  suppress  that 
sense  of  a  distinction  of  nature  between  God  and  our- 
selves which  finds  expression  in  the  metaphor  of '  creation  ' 
than  if  we  are  deaf  to  those  lofty  claims  and  aspirations 
of  the  human  spirit  which  find  utterance  in  the  counter 
affirmation  of  kinship  with  the  Highest  made  in  such 
words  as  that  Greek  poet's  whom  St.  Paul  is  said  to 
have  quoted  to  the  Athenians,  "rovyap  koX  yivog  iafitv" : 
"  For  we  are  also  his  offspring."  5 

Now  I  think  it  may  fairly  be  said  that,  of  the  metaphors 
which  lie  ready  to  our  hand  for  expressing  the  relation 
of  the  Divine  Spirit  to  ours,  that  of  creation  harmonizes 
best  with  the  sense  of  a  distinction  of  nature  between 
ourselves  and  God,  those  of  generation  or  emanation  with 
the  sense  of  a  community  of  nature,  a  kinship,  between 
us  and  him.  Of  the  two  latter  generation  would  seem 
so  far  preferable  to  emanation  for  the  purpose  which 
either  might  serve,  in  that  the  latter  suggests  a  process 
more  wholly  unconscious  and  involuntary  than  the  former. 
We  are  thus  left  with  two  metaphors,  creation  and  gene- 
ration, and  they  seem  both  to  be  required  in  order  to 
express  the  complex  relation  involved  in  our  religious 
experience. 

5  Acts    xvii.    28. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   CREATION  163 

A  combination  of  the  two,  in  which  they  are  not  merely 
used  alternately  with  one  another  but  an  attempt  is  made 
to  unite  in  an  intelligible  manner  the  two  aspects  of 
religious  experience  which  they  respectively  express,  is 
found  in  the  doctrine  of  a  Mediator,  which,  though  it  is 
more  important  in  Christian  theology  than  in  that  of 
any  other  religion,  and  certainly  a'^sumes  in  Christianity 
its  most  highly  developed  and  probably  its  most  defensible 
form,  is  yet  by  no  means  a  doctrine  peculiar  to  Chris- 
tianity. While  it  is  no  doubt  true  that  the  identification 
with  the  Mediator  of  the  historical  Founder  of  that  religion 
has  powerfully  contributed  to  keep  the  doctrine  alive 
and  effective  in  Christianity  as  it  has  not  been  kept  alive 
or  effective  elsewhere,  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  maintain 
it  apart  from  that  identification.  We  may  here  recall 
Gibbon's  celebrated  gibe  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos 
was  "  B.C.  200  taught  in  the  School  of  Alexandria,  a.d.  97 
revealed  by  the  Apostle  St.  John"^  and  the  often-quoted 
passage  in  Augustine's  Confessions  which  tells  how, 
before  he  had  accepted  Christianity,  he  had  learned 
from  the  books  of  the  Platonists  the  same  doctrine  as 
is  contained  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Fourth  Gospel  con- 
cerning the  divinity  and  the  creative  and  illuminating 
agency  of  the  Word,  but  did  not  find  it  there  taught 
that  "  the  Word  was  made  flesh."  7  It  is  interesting  to 
compare  Coleridge's  statement  ^  that  he  held  this 
doctrine  philosophically  "  while  in  respect  of  revealed 
religion "  he  "  remained  a  zealous  Unitarian."  These 
references,  indeed,  are  all  to  Neo-Platonic  speculation. 
But,  though  it  is  true  that  the  use  there  made  of  the 
notion  of  a  Mediator  is  more  nearly  akin  than  what  can 

*  In  the  table  of  contents  prefixed  to  the  Decline  and  Fall. 

7  Confess,  vii.  9.  *  Biog.  Lit.  c.  10.  (ed.  Shawcross,  i.  p.  137. 


164  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

elsewhere  be  found  to  the  Christian  dogma,  over  the 
presentation  of  which  of  course  the  speculations  of  the 
later  Greek  philosophy  exerted  no  small  influence,  it 
would  not  be  difficult  to  illustrate  the  notion  from  other 
quarters.  Our  present  concern,  however,  is  with  the 
notion  itself.  In  this  way  of  expressing  the  matter, 
identity  of  nature  with  God,  and  therefore  the  metaphor 
of  sonship  which  aims  at  suggesting  this,  is  appropriated 
to  the  Mediator  ;  the  difference  of  nature  and  the  corre- 
sponding metaphor  of  creatureship  to  the  individual  human 
spirit.  The  relation  of  the  Mediator  to  the  individual 
human  spirit  may  be  said  to  be  that  of  archetype. 

The  individual  human  spirit  is  conscious,  especially, 
though  not  exclusively,  in  its  religious  experience  of  its 
incompleteness  ;  and  it  can  only  find  satisfaction  in  a 
larger  spiritual  life  than  that  which  it  can  as  an  individual 
call  its  own.  This  larger  spiritual  life  is  at  first  that  of 
a  society,  of  which  the  individual  feels  himself  to  be 
a  member  ;  but  no  function  in  a  finite  society  can  ulti- 
mately exhaust  the  infinite  capacities  of  which  he  is 
aware  in  himself,  and  which  he  can  only  conceive  to  be 
fulfilled  in  the  infinite  and  absolute  life  of  God. 

It  is  just  in  this  point  that  St.  Paul's  conception  of  our 
membership  in  the  body  of  Christ  "  in  whom  dwelleth 
all  the  fullness  of  the  Godhead  bodily,"  9  goes  beyond 
that  contained  in  the  exposition  by  Plato  in  his  Republic  ^^ 
of  the  necessary  identity  of  structure  between  the  Soul 
and  the  State."  The  principle  there  laid  down  by  Plato, 
a  principle,  I  am  convinced,  of  fundamental  importance, 
is  restricted  in  its  application  by  Plato's  envisagement 
of  the  society  which  is  the  Soul  writ  large  under  the  forms 

9  Col.  ii.  9.  10  See  esp.  Rep.  ii.  368  c.  S.  ;  iv.  435  c.  ff. 

"  Cf.  Problems  in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  pp.  227  foil. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  CREATION  165 

of  a  Greek  city-state.  St.  Paul,  no  doubt,  in  his  turn 
had  his  attention  concentrated  on  the  moral  and  religious 
activities  of  the  human  spirit  to  the  comparative  neglect 
of  others.  But  the  principle  on  which  he  was  insisting, 
rather  indeed  as  a  preacher  than  as  a  philosopher,  with  a 
freer  use  of  metaphor  and  much  less  of  argument  than  we 
find  in  Plato — the  principle  that  the  larger  inclusive  Spirit, 
whose  traits  are  seen,  as  it  were,  in  miniature  in  those 
of  each  human  Soul,  is  no  other  than  the  one  Divine  Life 
— this  principle  may  rightly  be  regarded  as  the  comple- 
ment of  Plato's,  though  indeed  it  is  implicit  in  Plato's 
requirement  that  the  rulers  of  his  state  should  behold 
"  all  time  and  all  existence  "  in  the  Hght  of  the  one  supreme 
Idea,  the  Idea  of  the  Good." 

But  it  is  not  this  aspect  of  St.  Paul's  teaching  about 
the  *  body  of  Christ,'  in  which  it  supplements  the  Platonic 
doctrine  of  the  identity  of  structure  in  Soul  and  State, 
to  which  I  now  specially  wish  to  call  attention.  To 
this  I  shall  return  in  my  second  course  of  Lectures,  in 
which  I  hope  to  deal  with  human  personality  in  the  hght 
of  the  theological  conclusions  reached  in  the  present 
series.  The  feature  of  the  Pauhne  theory  which  primaiily 
concerns  us  now  is  its  introduction  of  a  Mediator.  The 
body  of  which  those  are  figuratively  described  as 
'  members,'  who  do  what  in  the  apostle's  judgment  all 
men  are  called  upon  to  do — this  body  is  called  the  body, 
not  of  God,  but  of  Christ.  It  is  of  course  beyond  question 
that,  in  the  view  of  St.  Paul  himself,  it  was  of  the  very 
essence  of  his  message  that  the  Christ  of  whom  he  speaks 
had  actually  appeared  as  a  man  among  men  in  the  person 
of  his  elder  contemporary,  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  It  was 
in  virtue  of  this  fact,  as  he  took  it  to  be,  that  he  had  a 
»*  See  Rep.  vi.  484B,  486A,  504D,  ff. 


166  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

gospel  to  preach,  and  not  merely  a  theological  theory 
to  propound.  But  for  the  moment  it  is  not  our  business 
to  examine  into  the  truth  of  Paul's  beUef  in  the  exalted 
nature  of  Jesus  ;  we  have  to  do  at  present  only  with  the 
conception  of  the  '  body  of  Christ  '  altogether  apart 
from  any  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  of  the  Mediator 
in  a  particular  historical  person. 

The  thought  of  St.  Paul  (and  I  am  especially  thinking 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians,  and  taking  it  to  be  his) 
seems  to  be  that  though  the  larger  and  inclusive  Ufe  in 
which  that  of  any  individual  man  or  woman  must  find 
its  completion  is  the  Ufe  of  God  (and  for  St.  Paul  there 
can  certainly  be  no  more  than  one  God),  yet  it  can  only 
find  this  completion  in  the  divine  Ufe  when  that  life  is 
poured  out,  so  to  say,  into  a  person  who,   while  thus 
sharing   the   divine   nature,   is   yet   distinguishable   from 
God.     The  distinction  from  God  which  Rehgion  implies 
remains  to  the  end  ;  but  the  difference  of  the  created 
nature  from  the  divine  is  transcended  through  the  in- 
timate union   (symbolized  by  that  of  the  members  of  a 
body  with  its  head)   with  a  Spirit  essentially  one  with 
God,  though  distinguishable  from  him,  the  archetype  of 
the  created  spirits,  who  obtain  in  their  union  with  this 
Spirit  what  is  described  as  a  sonship,  not,  like  that  Spirit's 
own,  by  nature,  but  by  adoption. ^3     I  think  that  this  is 
a  true  account  of  St.  Paul's  meaning  in  its  upshot,  but  it 
must  of  course  be  remembered  that  we  are  not  here  inter- 
ested in  the  question,  important  enough  in  its  own  place, 
how  far  St    Paul  himself  had  thought  out  the  issues  of 
his  own   view.     In   the   above   analysis   the   subsequent 
dogmatic  development   of  the   Pauline   speculations  has 
been  borne  in  mind,  and  on  the  other  hand  I  have  deliber- 
«3  See  Rom.  viii.  15,  Gal.  iv.  5. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   CREATION  167 

ately  neglected  their  historical  relationship  to  ideas  which 
were  current  in  the  intellectual  environment  of  the  apostle 
himself,  but  have  to  a  great  extent  lost  their  significance 
for  us  to-day. 

I  do  not,  however,  reckon  among  these  obsolete  ideas 
the  doctrine  of  a  Mediator.  I  consider  it,  on  the  con- 
trary, a  contribution  of  permanent  value  to  our  under- 
standing of  the  nature  of  the  spiritual  world. 

Two  possible  criticisms  of  this  view  may  probably 
occur  to  my  readers  :  one  that  to  seek  light  from  this 
doctrine  is  to  fall  back  from  Philosophy  to  Mythology  ; 
the  other  that  any  doctrine  of  mediation,  if  seriously 
taken  and  consistently  followed  out,  will  break  down, 
because  involving  us  in  a  regressus  ad  infinitum. 

In  order  to  meet  the  former  of  these  criticisms,  it  will 
be  desirable  to  consider  somewhat  carefully  what  we 
mean  by  Mythology,  and  what  service  Mythology  of  any 
kind  can  render  to  philosophy.  The  latter  criticism  will 
be  discussed  afterwards.  The  question  at  present  before 
us  is  not  whether  myths  may  not  be  used  for  what  we 
may  call  rhetoiical  purposes  in  philosophical  as  well 
as  in  other  kinds  of  literature  ;  for  there  can  surely  be  no 
reason  for  debarring  the  philosophical  writer  from  the 
employment  of  this  kind  of  device  on  occasion ;  but 
whether  myths  are  ever,  and  if  ever,  under  what  con- 
ditions, the  appropriate  vehicle  for  philosophical  reflection 
which  could  not  be  better  expressed  in  some  other 
form. 

There  is  a  celebrated  observation  of  Aristotle  '4  that 

the  lover  of  myths  is  in  a  sense  a  lover  of  wisdom  or 

philosopher  :    6  0(Xo/iu0oc  (^i\6<to(^6q  iru>Q  i<mv.      Another 

reading  of  this  saying  was  formerly  current,  which  ran 

M  Metaph.  A.  982  b.  18. 


168  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

thus :  (jtiXofivSog  6  <i>i\6<To<p6g  irb)g  t(TTiv :  "  The  lover  of 
wisdom  is  in  a  sense  a  lover  of  myths."  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  former  reading  is  correct,  and  that 
Aristotle  regarded  Mythology  as  an  immature  form  of 
Philosophy,  wherein  the  same  impulse  to  wonder  which 
at  a  more  advanced  stage  of  intellectual  development 
sought  satisfaction  in  such  speculations  as  his  own  con- 
tented itself  with  an  infantine  diet  of  marvellous  stories. 
But  the  false  reading,  according  to  which  the  philosopher 
himself  is  still  a  lover  of  myths,  though  it  does  not  agree 
with  the  context  of  this  passage,  may  nevertheless  bear 
a  good  meaning  of  its  own.  It  was  probably  in  a  recol- 
lection of  the  myths  of  Plato  that  the  misunderstanding 
of  Aristotle's  remark  originated ;  it  might  well  seem 
natural  enough  that  the  pupil  in  philosophy  of  one  who 
had  interwoven  so  many  immortal  tales  with  his  philo- 
sophic discourse  should  mention  the  love  of  tale-telhng 
as  characteristic  of  the  philosopher. 

What  relation,  we  shall  find  it  profitable  to  ask,  did 
the  myths  of  Plato  bear  to  his  philosophy  ?  I  will  ask 
you  to  allow  me  to  state  dogmatically  the  answer  which 
I  should  be  disposed  to  give  to  this  question.  I  think 
that  with  him  the  myth  is  not  concerned,  strictly  speaking, 
with  the  same  subject-matter  as  Philosophy,  but  rather 
takes  the  place  of  History,  where  a  historical  question 
is  asked,  but  the  materials  for  an  historical  answer  are 
lacking. 

How  did  the  world  come  into  being  ?  How  did  society 
begin  ?  What  will  happen  to  our  souls  after  death  ? 
It  is  to  such  questions  as  these  that  Plato  offers  repUes 
in  the  form  of  myths.  Philosophy  cannot  answer  such 
questions,  any  more  than  it  can  tell  me  where  I  dined  this 
day  last  year  or  where  I  shall  dine  this  day  next  year. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  CREATION  169 

For  an  answer  to  the  former  of  these  two  inquiries  I 
should  consult  my  personal  memory  or  my  journal ;  and  if 
I  wished  for  information  about  something  that  happened 
before  I  was  born,  I  should  seek  for  it  in  the  history  books. 
But  if  what  I  want  to  know  must  have  happened  at  a 
time  whereof  there  is  no  record  extant,  what  can  I  do  ? 
The  best  I  can  do,  says  Plato,  is  to  frame  a  myth,  a  story 
which,  if  not  the  truth,  will  at  any  rate  be  hke  the  truth.^s 
But  this  cannot  merely  mean  that  it  is  to  be  hke  what 
actually  occurred,  for  ex  hypothesi  I  do  not  know  what 
did  occur,  and  hence  cannot  tell  what  would  be  hke  it 
and  what  not. 

What  it  means  for  Plato,  however,  is  not  doubtful. 
It  means  that  the  myth  is  to  be  in  accord  with  those 
conclusions  as  to  the  general  nature  of  things  which  I 
derive  not  from  History  but  from  Philosophy.  Just  as 
you  could  not  tell  me  where  and  on  what  I  dined  this 
day  last  year,  but  could  confidently  assert  that  it  was 
not  in  fairyland  and  not  on  nectar  and  ambrosia,  so  too 
we  are  sure  that  whatever  took  place  in  the  unrecorded 
past  must  have  been  consistent  with  what  we  know  to 
be  the  eternal  nature  of  Reahty ;  whatever  we  have 
reason  to  think  is  incompatible  with  that  eternal  nature 
of  Reahty  we  have  reason  to  think  did  not  occur  in  the 
past  and  will  not  occur  in  the  future.  Thus  when  Socrates 
in  Plato's  Republic  has  to  lay  down  a  law  for  the  stories 
of  gods  and  godUke  men  which  can  be  tolerated  in  his 
model  State,  he  rules  out  all  such  as  violate  the  philo- 
sophical axiom  that  only  what  is  good  can  be  divine.  ^^ 
Stories,  on  the  other  hand,  which  attribute  good  actions  to 
the  gods  may  be  told,  for  such,  though  perhaps  not  true, 
are  hke  the  truth  ;  whatever  was  done  by  God  must  have 
»5  See  Rep.  ii.  382D.  «6  See  Rep.  ii.  379  ff- 


170  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

been  good,  whether  it  was  just  that  particular  good 
action  or  another.  So,  too,  the  myth  of  Er  at  the  end 
of  the  same  Dialogue  is  frankly  fiction  as  to  its  details  ; 
but  it  is,  in  Plato's  judgment,  '  like  the  truth  '  in  so  far 
as  it  represents  the  good  and  evil  in  human  characters 
as  working  out  their  consequences  in  a  rise  or  fall  respec- 
tively in  the  scale  of  being.  That  life  is  and  always  must 
be  the  scene  of  moral  judgment,  of  this  Plato  is  convinced  ; 
and  therefore  if  we  would  weave  stories  about  the  future 
which  is  hidden  from  us  (perhaps  for  the  reason  that  it 
is  not  yet  made)  we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  suppose 
things  governed  by  any  other  principle,  or  we  shall 
assuredly  be  disappointed. 

A  philosophic  myth,  then,  after  the  fashion  of  Plato, 
is  a  story  told  about  individuals,  where  memory  and 
history  and  prophecy  (if  such  a  thing  there  be)  have 
failed  us,  so  that  we  do  not  know  from  these,  the  only 
possible  souices  of  information  about  individual  facts 
in  the  past  and  future,  what  was  or  what  will  be  the  fate 
of  the  individuals  about  whom  we  are  curious.  It  is  a 
story  thus  which  is  quite  hkely  to  be  untrue — nay,  even 
quite  unlikely  to  be  true  in  detail,  but  which  is  in  the 
Platonic  phrase  '  like  the  truth,'  because  it  is  controlled 
by  our  knowledge,  obtained  through  Philosophy,  of  that 
fundamental  nature  of  the  universal  system  which  any 
particular  event  falUng  within  it  must  of  necessity  exem- 
pHfy.  It  thus  illustrates  our  philosophical  knowledge 
without  adding  to  it,  and  gives  the  outline  of  the  his- 
torical fact,  which  is  unknown  in  detail,  because  it  belongs 
either  to  a  forgotten  past  or  to  an  unforeseen  future  (I 
do  not  here  inquire  whether  the  future  can  ever  be  fore- 
seen) or  again,  to  a  present  beyond  our  ken. 

But,  if  this  be  a  true  account  of  the  part  played  by 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  CREATION  171 

myths  in  the  Platonic  writings,  there  is  another  feature 
of  the  myths  actually  found  there  which  deserves  our 
attention.  All  the  principal  Platonic  myths  may  be 
said  to  relate  to  the  Soul.  Some  concern  the  past  or 
future  of  particular  souls — such  are  those  in  the  Phcedrus 
and  in  the  last  book  of  the  Republic  ;  while  of  others  the 
theme  is  the  origin  of  the  World  Soul  (as  in  the  Timceus) 
or  (as  in  the  Protagoras  or  in  the  third  book  of  the 
Republic)  of  the  community,  in  which,  as  we  may  learn 
from  the  second  book  of  the  latter  Dialogue,  we  find  writ 
large  the  same  story  as  is  set  forth  in  lesser  characters 
in  the  souls  of  its  members. 

Now  why  is  it  that  the  philosophical  myth  as  employed 
by  the  thinker  who  has  made  most  use  of  it,  and  who  is 
also  the  greatest  thinker  that  has  ever  made  use  of  it, 
is  so  closely  associated  with  the  Soul  ?  We  shall  find  that 
the  answer  to  this  question  will  help  us  to  see  why  we 
should  not  be  surprised  to  find  a  conception  useful  to  us 
in  our  present  inquiry — such  as  that  of  a  Mediator — 
lending  itself  to  illustration  by  a  myth,  and  will  also 
perhaps  throw  some  light  on  our  main  problem  of 
Personality. 

The  Greek  word  which  we  translate  Soul,  the  word 
^v\r),  is  certainly  not  equivalent  to  Personality.  It 
has  a  much  wider  range  of  denotation,  and  is  used  of 
life  in  plant  and  animal  and  of  the  universal  Life  which 
'  rolls  through  all  things  "  '7  no  less  than  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  life  of  human  beings. 

At  the  same  time  it  may,  I  think,  be  said  that,  so  far  as 

regards  Plato  at  any  rate,  it  is  to  the  human  soul,  to  which 

we  should  attribute  personality,  that  he  goes  for  his  clue 

to   the  nature  of  Soul  elsewhere.     W^e  need   not   accept 

'7  Wordsworth,  Tintevn  Abbey. 

M 


172  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

too  literally  the  account  in  the  myth  of  Er  of  the  rebirth 
of  human  souls  in  the  forms  of  those  animals  which  ex- 
hibit the  qualities  that  had  distinguished  them  in  their 
lives  as  men  and  women  ;  but  I  do  not  think  we  can  be 
wrong  in  taking  it  to  hint  at  least  at  a  fundamental  kinship 
between  all  forms  of  life,  which  will  justify  us  in  tracing 
everywhere  within  the  world  of  living  beings  the  hkeness 
of  what  we  know  more  intimately  as  it  appears  in  our 
fellow-men  and  in  ourselves. ^^  And  it  is  distinctly  taught 
in  the  Philebus  ^9  that,  just  as  our  outward  frames  are  built 
up  out  of  elements  which  are  found  on  a  larger  scale  in 
the  world  around  us,  whence  the  stuff  whereof  they  are 
made  was  originally  taken  and  is  during  life  constantly 
replenished ;  so  also  our  reason  testifies  to  the  presence 
of  a  vaster  reason  "  in  the  nature  of  Zeus,"  the  divine 
Soul  of  the  World,  whence  alone  we  can  suppose  ours  to 
derive  its  origin  and  maintenance.  Thus  to  say  that  all 
the  Platonic  myths  relate  to  the  nature  of  the  Soul  is  to 
say  that  they  relate  to  a  nature  which  we  know  most 
intimately  in  a  personal  form,  and  are  thus  almost  con- 
strained to  construe  elsewhere  on  the  analogy  of  our  own 
personal  Hfe. 

Moreover  in  Plato's  philosophy  it  is  Soul  which  is  the 
source  of  all  motion,  the  active  principle  of  the  whole 
cosmic  process.so  The  Idea  or  Form  of  the  Good  is  indeed 
the  supreme  principle  of  explanation,  in  the  light  of 
which  it  is  the  aim  of  the  philosopher  to  view  all  reaUty 
as  one  harmonious  system  ;  but  it  is  in  and  through  Soul 
that  this  and  all  the  Ideas,  Forms,  or  eternal  natures, 
among  which  the  Idea  or  Form  of  the  Good  is  pre-eminent 
as  the  sun  among  the  lesser  lights  of  heaven,  initiate  and 

'8  Cp.  Nettleship,  Lectures   on  Plato's  Republic,  pp.  333,  364. 
«9  See  Philebus,  29A  flf.  ^°  See  Phcsdrus,   245  d,  e. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  CREATION  173 

carry  forward  the  creative  process  which  is  the  history 
of  the  world.  Not  that  the  Ideas  are  (to  quote 
Berkeley  in  his  latest  and  most  Platonic  mood)  "  creatures 
of  the  soul  of  man  " — or,  we  may  add,  of  any  super-human 
soul  conceived  on  the  analog}'-  of  the  soul  of  man.  Rather 
they  are,  as  the  same  philosopher  goes  on  to  tell  us, 
"  innate  and  originally  existent  therein,  not  as  an  accident 
in  a  substance,  but  as  light  to  enlighten  and  as  a  guide  to 
govern  " — "  not  figments  of  the  mind,  nor  mere  mixed 
modes,  nor  yet  abstract  ideas  in  the  modern  sense,  but 
the  most  real  beings,  intellectual  and  unchangeable  and 
therefore  more  real  than  the  fleeting,  transient  objects 
of  sense."  '^ 

I  added  just  now  to  my  quotation  from  Berkeley  the 
words  '  nor  of  any  superhuman  soul  conceived  on  the 
analogy  of  the  soul  of  man,'  because  I  think  it  important 
to  remember  that,  if  we  find  it  unsatisfactory  to  regard 
Goodness,  Beauty,  and  Truth  as  '  mere  ideas  '  in  our 
modern  sense,  inhering  in  the  mind,  '  as  an  accident  in 
a  substance,'  it  will  not  be  less  unsatisfactory  to  regard 
them  as  ideas  of  this  kind  in  God's  mind,  so  far  as  we 
take  the  Divine  Mind  to  be  related  to  its  thoughts  and 
notions  no  otherwise  than  as  our  minds  are  related  to 
our  thoughts  and  notions.  This  difficulty  is  recognized 
by  the  scholastic  theologians,  who  attempt  to  obviate 
it  by  the  help  of  their  doctrine  that  whatsoever  God  is, 
he  is  that  not  in  virtue  of  a  nature  which  he  possesses 
or  in  which  he  shares,  but  in  his  own  right  and,  as  it  is 
put,  substantially.  Thus  Socrates  may  be  wise  and  good, 
but  we  could  not  say  that  he  is  wisdom  and  goodness, 
only  that  he  has  some  share  of  them.  He  may,  indeed, 
not    always   have   been   wise    and    good,    he    may    not 

»•  Siris,  §  335. 


174  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

always  remain  so,  but  wisdom  and  goodness  are  still 
what  they  are  whether  he  or  another  order  his  ways 
according  to  them  or  not.  On  the  other  hand,  when  we 
call  God  wise  and  good  we  mean  more  than  this.  We 
mean  that  he  is  himself  the  wisdom  and  the  goodness  of 
which  wo  are  speaking  ;  there  is  no  wisdom  or  goodness 
beyond  him  in  which  he  shares.  We  cannot  conceive 
him  apart  from  wisdom  or  goodness,  nor,  if  we  believe  in 
him  at  all,  can  we  think  of  wisdom  and  goodness  apart 
from  him. 

It  is  probable  that  Plato  did  not  identify  God  with 
the  Form  or  Idea  of  the  Good,  but  rather  regarded  him 
as  a  Soul,  informed  by  that  Idea,  which  was  the  source 
of  all  the  glorious  order  and  harmony  which  we  find  in 
the  universe  ;  but,  as  a  great  Platonic  scholar.  Professor 
Burnet  of  St.  Andrews,  has  lately  observed,  it  was  in  this 
distinction  of  Plato's  between  God  and  what  was  acknow- 
ledged to  be  the  Highest,  a  distinction  which  the  modern 
theist  does  not  make  (though  Mr.  Bradley,  it  is  true, 
holds  that  he  cannot  become  a  philosopher  without 
making  it) ,  that  we  must  seek  the  principal  source  of  those 
controversies  which  the  Church  Councils  of  the  fourth 
century  of  our  era  were  summoned  to  decide. 22  I  feel 
myself  convinced  that  the  maintenance  of  the  Platonic 
distinction  can  never  prove  in  the  long  run  satisfactory 
to  the  religious  consciousness.  The  God  whom  we  worship 
must  be  the  Highest,  must  be  what  Plato  called  the  Idea 
of  the  Good,  but  this  Good  must  not,  as  m  the  Platonic 
tradition  (which  Plotinus  also  followed),  be  something  in 
its  innermost  nature  above  and  beyond  even  the  most 
exalted  kind  of  Soul.  The  best  Soul,  the  divine  Spirit, 
which  moves  and  works  in  the  world,  and  is  the  source 

--J  Burnet,  Greek  Philosophy  from  Thales  to  Plato,  §  255,  p.  337. 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   CREATION  175 

of  what  is  good  in  the  human  souls,  which  derive  their 
origin  from  it,  must  be  essentially  one  with  the  Highest  ; 
even  in  its  innermost  nature  the  Highest  must  possess 
that  spiritual  life  of  which  our  personality  is  but  a  faint 
and  imperfect  likeness. 

I  have  been  dwelling  on  the  teaching  of  Plato  respect- 
ing the  Soul,  since  it  was  in  speaking  of  the  Soul  that, 
as  we  saw,  he  found  himself  led  to  that  use  of  myths  in 
connexion  with  philosophical  speculation  which  is  so 
characteristic  of  his  writings.  But  I  should  not  have 
dwelt  on  that  teaching  at  such  length  did  I  not  in  the 
main  accept  it  and  hold  that  he  was  right  in  recognizing 
the  doctrine  of  the  Soul  as  the  meeting-point  of  the 
Universal  and  the  Individual,  of  Philosophy  and  History, 
where  therefore  Philosophy  requires  to  be  reinforced  by 
History,  and  therefore,  faiUng  genuine  history,  by  Myth, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  in  Plato's  view  the  surrogate 
of  History,  showing  what  the  historical  fact  might  have 
been,  within  the  hmits  imposed  by  that  eternal  nature 
of  things  the  outlines  whereof  Philosophy  has  ascer- 
tained. 

Now  this  sphere,  in  which  the  philosophical  myth  is 
in  place,  is  also  the  sphere  of  Religion.  In  teaching 
Greek  philosophy  one  has  often  to  bid  one's  pupils  beware 
of  allowing  the  religious  associations  of  the  word  '  soul,' 
as  employed  m  our  everyday  language,  to  confuse  them 
in  studying  what  the  Greeks  have  to  say  of  xpvxh-  Never- 
theless those  very  associations  of  the  word  '  soul '  with 
Religion,  which  may  in  certain  circumstances  prove  mis- 
leading, have  their  roots  in  the  fact  that  it  is  just  in  the 
experience  which  we  call  religious  that  we  become  most 
intimately  aware  of  the  nature  of  the  Soul,  as  the  meeting- 
point    of    the    Universal    contemplated    by   Philosophy 


176  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

with  the  Individual  which  is  the  subject-matter  of 
History.  In  Religion  we  are  not  content  (and  I  believe, 
though  I  cannot  now  go  in  detail  into  the  reasons  for 
my  belief,  some  of  which  I  have  attempted  to  give  else- 
where,23  that  this  discontent  is  most  strongly  marked 
in  the  highest  forms  of  Religion)  to  treat  what  is  historical 
as  a  mere  illustration  of  the  universally  valid,  or  again 
the  universal  as  a  mere  abstraction  from  the  historically 
real.  Nor  are  we  even  content,  with  some  who  would  do 
neither  of  these  two  things,  to  keep  the  eternal  truth  of 
Philosophy  and  the  individual  fact  of  History  for  ever 
apart,  as  the  concave  and  the  convex  in  the  circumference 
of  the  circle  are  apart,  never  meeting  though  for  ever 
inseparable.  It  is  indeed  possible  to  follow  a  distinguished 
philosopher  of  our  own  day,  to  whose  sentiments  on  this 
subject  I  have  already  referred,  and  whom  I  had  in  mind 
in  what  I  have  just  said,  I  mean  Signor  Benedetto  Croce, 
in  treating  Religion  on  this  very  ground  as  no  genuinely 
distinct  form  of  spiritual  activity  but  as  a  naive  con- 
fusion of  the  infinite  with  the  finite,  of  the  universal  with 
the  individual,  from  which  Philosophy,  in  substituting 
itself  for  it,  has  withdrawn  all  reason  for  existing.  But 
this  view,  which  sees  in  Religion  nothing  but  an  imperfect 
and  inferior  kind  of  knowledge,  does  not,  as  I  have  already 
said,  stand  in  need  of  refutation  for  any  one  who  knows 
for  himself  from  within  -Wiiat  Religion  is.  It  would  be 
as  idle  to  seek  a  valuable  account  of  Religion  from  a 
man  who  does  not  know  this,  even  though  he  be  as  acute 
a  thinker  as  Signor  Croce,  as  it  would  be  to  go  for  a  theory 
of  art  to  a  certain  person — an  able  and  in  some  ways 
highly  cultivated  man — who  professed  himself  unable  to 
see  what  excellence  could  be  attributed  to  portraiture 
23  See  Studies  in  the  History  of  Natural  Theology,  p.  30 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  CREATION  177 

besides  that  of  such  a  Ukeness  to  the  original  as  we  are 
content  to  look  for  in  a  photograph. 

It  is,  then,  where  we  can  least  afford,  while  contem- 
plating the  universal  form  and  nature  of  Reality,  to 
dispense  with  considering  it  in  relation  to  the  historical 
and  individual  Reality  whereof  it  is  the  form  and  nature, 
that  the  philosophical  myth  may  provisionally  take  the 
place  of  a  history  which  we  have  not  at  hand  in  memory 
or  on  record.  This  will  be  where  the  Soul  (which  must 
certainly  here  be  personal  Soul,  for  only  personal  Soul 
can  philosophize)  is  occupied  in  the  task  which  was 
prescribed  to  it  long  since  by  the  Delphic  oracle, 24  of 
investigating  its  own  nature.  And  not  only  in  ancient 
Greece,  but  here  and  everywhere,  it  is  the  influence  of 
Religion  which  most  often  drives  us  to  undertake  such 
an  investigation. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  genuine  '  revelation,'  in  that 
legitimate  sense  of  '  revelation  '  in  which  it  is  used  of  the 
historical  and  individual  element  in  religious  knowledge 
as  contrasted  with  the  element  which  is  rather  philo- 
sophical and  universal  (for  in  another  sense  we  must 
acknowledge  all  religious  truth  to  be  a  revelation), *5  would 
render  the  device  of  a  myth  unnecessary  here. 26 

I  have  dwelt  so  long  upon  the  nature  and  function  of 
the  philosophical  myth  because  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  conception  of  a  Mediator  is  one  which  certainly 
lends  itself  to  embodiment  in  such  a  myth  and  hence  may 
be  too  hastily  dismissed  as  merely  mythological. 

It  seemed,  therefore,  worth  while  to  make  an  attempt 
to    show,    by    means   of   the    discussions   we  have   just 

24  Tyudi  (TtavTOv. 

25  Cp.  Problems  in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  pp.  48,  58  ff. 
»6  Cp.  Plato,  Phcedo,  85D. 


178  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

completed,  that  conceptions  which  call  for  a  myth  to 
bring  out  their  significance  for  the  life  of  individual  souls 
are  not  to  be  ruled  out  of  court  in  such  an  investigation 
as  that  upon  which  we  are  now  engaged.  What  I  under- 
stand by  the  doctrine  of  a  Mediator,  apart  from  any 
mythical  elaboration,  is  this,  that  religious  experience 
in  its  most  complete  form  piesupposes  a  twofold  relation 
of  the  soul  to  God,  to  which  the  phraseology  of  that 
doctrine  gives  a  more  satisfactory  expression  than  any 
other  which  we  can  find.  We  may  most  conveniently 
illustrate  this  by  comparing  that  phraseology  with  other 
language  that  has  been  employed  in  describing  the  impli- 
cations of  the  reUgious  consciousness.  To  one  factor  in 
that  consciousness,  the  sense  of  kinship  with  the  Highest, 
the  lofty  language  of  Stoicism  gives  an  utterance  which 
may  sometimes  rise  into  subhmity  ;  but  there  is  another 
mood  which  at  least  alternates  with  this  in  Religion,  to 
which  the  unquaUfied  claim  to  divinity  which  that  language 
makes  is  repellent  and  even  absurd.  This  mood  some- 
times takes  its  revenge  even  in  Stoicism  itself  by  intense 
and  sometimes  even  morbid  scorn  of  that  side  of  humanity 
which  is  akin  not  to  God  but  rather  to  the  beasts  that 
perish.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  language  of  grovel- 
ling self-abasement  in  which  this  mood  itself  is  found 
sometimes  to  pour  itself  out,  which  is  no  less  repugnant 
to  souls  that  cannot  forget  "  that  imperial  palace  whence  " 
they  "  came  "  27  and  feel  that  servility  does  not  become 
the  "  children  of  the  Most  High."  28 

Where  the  conception  of  a  Mediator  is  introduced  and 
the  individual  human  being  conceives  himself  as  created 
by  God  through  the  instrumentality  and  in  the  likeness 

>7  Wordsworth,  Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality. 
*8  Psa.  Ixxxii.  6 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   CREATION  179 

of  the  Mediator,  and  as  adopted  to  be  God's  child,  not 
in  his  own  right,  but  only  as  united  with  the  Mediator, 
who  is  God's  Son  by  nature,  it  is  possible  to  reconcile 
and  combine  the  two  religious  moods  of  which  we  have 
spoken  and  which  may  be  said  to  occupy  the  opposite 
poles  of  the  religious  consciousness.  The  consciousness 
of  nothingness  before  God  is  justified  as  befitting  the 
creature  in  the  presence  of  the  Creator,  but  is  redeemed 
from  servility  and  baseness  by  the  consciousness  of  divine 
sonship  ;  while  the  unlovely  pride  which  tends  to  spring 
up  in  one  who  holds,  like  the  Stoics,  that  God  has  no 
advantage  over  the  wise  and  good  man  except  in  his 
longer  continuance,29  is  checked  by  the  sense  of  devout 
gratitude  for  the  free  gift  of  adoption,  both  towards  the 
Father  who  adopts,  and  towards  the  Son  the  Mediator, 
in  and  through  whom  the  adoption  takes  place. 

In  all  this,  even  if  the  play  of  imagination  be  not  further 
encouraged,  there  is  metaphor  and  even  myth  employed ; 
but  the  conception  of  our  relation  to  God,  in  accordance 
with  which  the  metaphors  are  selected  and  constructed, 
is  one  which  (if  I  am  not  mistaken)  satisfies  better  than 
any  other  which  can  be  suggested  the  competing  de- 
mands of  the  religious  consciousness.  Herein  lies  its 
justification  as  a  religious  doctrine  ;  and  it  is  a  sufficient 
justification.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that,  if  the 
interpretation  put  by  the  Christian  Church  on  certain 
occurrences  should  be  admitted,  genuine  history  would 
then  to  a  certain  extent  supersede  myth  in  this  case  ; 
but  it  would  be  to  a  certain  extent  only,  for  it  is  obvious 
that,  to  use  for  the  moment  Christian  phraseology,  the 
pre-existent  and  the  ascended  Ufe  of  Christ  could  not  be 

«9  See  Seneca,  Ep.  Ixxiii.  §  13,  de  Pvovidentia,  i.  §  5.  Cp.  Zeller, 
Stoics,  Epicureans,  and  Sceptics,  Eng.  tr.  p.  254. 


180  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

described  except  in  a  mythical  fashion.  No  doubt,  as 
I  have  suggested  above,  the  conviction  that  one  is  here 
avaiUng  oneself  not  merely  of  myth  but  of  genuine 
history,  has  caused  a  conception  by  no  means  peculiar 
to  Christian  theology  to  persist  in  that  theology  with  an 
intensity  and  practical  efficacy  to  which  it  could  scarcely 
otherwise  have  attained. 

I  shall  dwell  at  far  less  length  on  the  second  objection 
which  I  mentioned  earher  in  this  Lecture  as  brought 
against  the  notion  of  a  Mediator,  in  addition  to  that  of 
being  mythological.  This  was  the  objection  that  if  once 
we  admit  a  mediator,  we  shall  find  ourselves  committed 
to  a  regressus  ad  infinitum.  I  must  reply  to  this  that 
here,  as  in  some  other  instances  in  which  this  objection 
has  been  alleged  to  be  subversive  of  quite  indispensable 
notions  (I  am  thinking  especially  of  Mr.  Bradley's  criticism 
of  Relations)  3°  it  will  prove  on  closer  inspection  to  be  an 
unsubstantial  phantom.  Where  there  is  a  significance 
in  mediation  between  two  terms  which  cannot  be  found 
in  any  further  mediation  between  the  mediating  term  and 
either  of  the  extremes  there  is  nothing  to  drive  one  to 
continue  mediation  ad  infinitum ;  and  in  this  present 
instance  this  would  seem  to  be  the  case.  The  conception 
of  a  Mediator  corresponds,  if  there  be  anything  in  what 
I  have  just  put  before  you,  to  a  genuine  demand  of  the 
religious  consciousness,  which  does  not  repeat  itself  ad 
infinitum.  I  am  of  course  aware  that  there  are  certain 
facts  in  the  history  of  Christian  dogma  which  might 
appear  to  contradict  this  assertion.  Into  the  detailed 
consideration  of  these  I  cannot  now  go,  but  must  content 
myself  with  the  following  observations.  In  the  case  of 
some  of  these  we  have  to  do  with  fallacious  subtleties 
30  Appearance  and  Reality,  c.  3. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CREATION  181 

corresponding  in  the  sphere  of  religious  speculation  and 
devotion  to  the  subtleties  which  in  logic  have  sometimes 
arisen  from  the  vain  attempts  to  explain  indispensable 
conceptions  in  terms  of  something  else.  In  the  case  of 
others,  again,  I  should  admit  that  there  may  be  and  cer- 
tainly is  mediation  elsewhere  in  the  reUgious  life  than  in 
the  fundamental  relation  of  the  soul  to  God  (for  example, 
the  truth  about  this  or  any  other  matter  may  be  com- 
municated to  one  man  by  another),  but  that  here  again 
in  these  genuine  cases  of  mediation  there  is  no  need 
whatever  to   proceed   ad  infinitum. 

The  doctrine  of  a  Mediator  has,  then,  supplied  us  with 
a  means  of  uniting  the  thoughts  which  were  respectively 
symbolized  by  the  metaphors  of  creation  and  of  generation 
as  descriptions  of  the  origin  of  our  spirits  from  God.  In 
their  separateness  and  in  their  actual  finitude  they  are 
creatures  of  God  and  not  sharers  in  his  nature  ;  but  in 
their  totality  and  ideal  completeness,  in  their  archetype 
(as  we  may  say),  they  are  sharers  in  it,  they  are  '  begotten 
of  God,'  31  and  in  their  historical  development,  through 
an  identification  of  themselves  with  the  archetype  which 
comes  to  pass  in  time  (and  which  need  not  always  take 
the  form  of  an  explicit  acceptance  of  such  a  formula  as 
we  may  find  the  best  for  expressing  the  facts),  they  become 
conscious  of  their  divine  nature  as  belonging  to  them 
not  in  their  own  right  but  as  mediated  through  their 
archetype.  Every  soul  which  thus  becomes  conscious  of 
her  divine  nature  at  all  will  express  it  in  terms  which,  at 
least  in  part,  may  be  called  mythological.  But  we  must 
remember  that  what  we  find  taught  in  these  matters  in 
the  writings  of  thinkers  who  avoid  obviously  mytho- 
logical language  very  often  differs  from  the  teaching 
3»  I  John  V.  18. 


182  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

which    we    find    in    religious    creeds    not    by   being    less 
mythological  but  only  in  being  more  prosaic. 

The  description  and  mutual  reconciliation  of  those 
facts  of  religious  experience  which  I  have  described  as 
at  first  sight  mutually  inconsistent  and  so  requiring  to 
be  harmonized  by  the  help  of  this  conception  of  a  Medi- 
ator will,  I  think,  be  found  to  involve,  when  worked  out 
into  a  theological  doctrine,  the  recognition  of  a  twofold 
Personality  in  the  Divine  Nature.  For  we  have  to  express 
a  consciousness  of  personal  communion  with  God  felt 
on  the  one  hand  to  be  a  communion  of  spirit  with  kindred 
spirit,  of  Son  with  Father,  and  yet  on  the  other  to  belong 
as  such  not  to  the  individual  in  isolation  and  imperfection, 
but  in  the  ideal  and  archetype  of  his  nature,  as  completed 
in  a  society  of  which  he  may  be  a  member  not  only  in 
respect  of  a  part  of  his  capacities  but  of  his  whole  being. 
Here  the  personal  communion  itself,  as  belonging  to  the 
true  nature  of  God — and  in  nothing  less  than  this  can 
the  aspiration  of  the  religious  consciousness  find  satis- 
faction— implies  a  personal  distinction  within  that  nature  ; 
while  the  individual  further  distinguishes  his  own  separate 
and  imperfect  personahty  from  the  ideal  personality 
which  is  thought  of  as  eternally  distinguishing  itself 
from  God  in  the  communion  which  is  the  consummation 
of  the  religious  life.  No  doubt  such  a  belief  as  that  of 
Christianity  in  the  incarnation  of  this  ideal  personality, 
this  divine  Logos  or  Mediator,  in  the  historical  Jesus, 
if  it  introduces  certain  not  inconsiderable  difficulties  of 
its  own,  also  gives  to  these  thoughts  a  content  on  which 
the  mind  and  heart  can  feed,  which  is  lacking  while  they 
remain  in  the  region  of  speculation  or  are  associated 
with  figures  purely  imaginary,  or  again  with  spiritual 
realities  which  do  not  possess  full  personality,  such  as  a 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   CREATION  183 

Nation,  a  Church,  or  a  Law.  It  is  thus  easily  expHcable 
that  the  doctrine  of  a  Mediator  should  be  more  prominent 
in  Christianity  than  elsewhere,  and  might  easily  be  mis- 
taken for  a  mere  inference  from  a  certain  interpretation 
of  historical  facts  which  cannot  here  be  assumed.  But 
in  truth  it  is,  as  was  said  before,  a  doctrhie  which  may 
appear,  and  has  appeared,  in  contexts  other  than  Christian  ; 
while  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Christianity  itself, 
in  its  identification  of  the  Logos  or  Mediator  with  Jesus, 
sees  in  his  earthly  life  as  a  man  among  men  no  more  than 
one  stage  of  the  manifestation  of  the  Son  of  God,  who  is 
known  by  his  Church  in  her  theology  and  her  worship 
"  not  after  the  flesh  "  32  but  after  the  spirit  as  risen  and 
ascended  and  as  the  head  of  his  '  mystical  body,'  the 
ideal    society  of    redeemed    Humanity, 

So  far,  in  disthiguishing  the  individual  soul  from  that 
in  which  it  seeks  completion,  and  which  may  be  described 
in  religious  language  as  the  eternal  Son  of  God,  I  have 
spoken  merely  of  the  individual  soul  as  imperfect,  not 
as  evil  or  sinful.  The  consciousness  of  Sin  introduces  a 
new  complication  of  our  problem.  For  the  existence  of 
evil,  and  in  particular  of  moral  evil  or  sin,  is  held  by  some 
to  be  the  greatest  of  all  difficulties  in  admitting  the  presence 
of  Personality  in  God,  by  others  as  a  proof  that  God  must 
be  distinguished  from  the  Absolute.  To  the  considera- 
tion of  this  most  difficult  topic  I  shall  turn  in  my  next 

Lecture. 

3»  2  Cor.  V.  16. 


LECTURE  VIII 

THE  PROBLEM  OF   SIN 

At  the  end  of  the  last  Lecture  we  found  ourselves  con- 
fronted with  the  fact  of  our  consciousness  of  Sin,  which 
seems  to  make  it  impossible  to  regard  our  souls  as 
differing  from  the  divine  Spirit  merely  as  parts  differ 
from  the  whole,  or  even  as  the  lower  grades  of  one  nature 
differ  from  the  higher.  Even  the  metaphor  of  Creation, 
which  was  invoked  to  express  one  pole  of  our  religious 
consciousness,  is  not  entirely  adequate  to  describe  the 
sense  of  alienation  from  God  which  we  call  the  conscious- 
ness of  Sin.  We  are,  in  the  phraseology  of  Christian 
theology,  not  creatures  only,  but  fallen  creatures.  There 
is  that  in  us  which  cries  out  not  merely  for  improvement 
and  completion  but  for  correction  and  forgiveness.  This 
consciousness  of  Sin  may  not  be,  and  is  not,  equally  vivid 
in  all  men,  or  at  all  times,  or  under  all  circumstances.  It 
may  be  intensified  and  fostered  by  a  tradition  which 
makes  much  account  of  it,  weakened  and  discouraged 
by  one  which  ignores  it.  But  no  one  who  has  really 
known  it  can  be  content  with  theories  which  confound 
it  with  the  consciousness  of  incompleteness  or  finitude, 
such  as  may  be  present  where  there  is  no  thought  of  self- 
reproach,  and  where  to  entreat  forgiveness  for  our  lack 

184 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  185 

of  what  it  in  no  way  behoves  us  to  possess  would  seem 
inappropriate  and  absurd. 

This  distinction  between  the  consciousness  of  Sin  and 
that  of  incompleteness  or  finitude  is  not  to  be  treated 
as  negligible  because  there  is  a  possibility  of  mistaking 
even  in  ourselves  particular  instances  of  mere  incomplete- 
ness for  instances  of  Sin  and  particular  instances  of  Sin 
for  instances  of  mere  incompleteness.  We  can  distinguish 
blue  from  green  well  enough,  although  we  may  sometimes 
be  in  doubt  whether  a  particular  shade  of  colour  is  green 
or  blue. 

It  is  by  no  means  my  purpose  in  this  Lecture  to  enter 
upon  a  general  discussion  of  that  which  Carlyle  has  called  ^ 
"  a  vain  interminable  controversy  touching  what  is  at 
present  called  Origin  of  Evil,"  a  controversy  which,  as 
he  adds,  "  arises  in  every  soul  since  the  beginning  of  the 
world  ;  and  in  every  soul  that  would  pass  from  idle 
Suffering  into  actual  Endeavouring  must  first  be  put 
an  end  to."  I  am  only  concerned  here  with  the  question 
of  the  bearing  which  the  consciousness  of  Sin,  of  moral 
evil,  in  ourselves  may  be  thought  to  have  upon  the 
conception   of   Divine   Personality. 

As  I  hinted  at  the  end  of  my  last  Lecture,  it  may  be 
argued  in  two  ways  from  two  opposite  points  of  view 
that  this  consciousness  is  not  really  compatible  with  the 
recognition  of  Personality  in  the  infinite  and  absolute 
Being.  This  is  contended  in  one  way  by  those  who  would 
deny  Personality  to  the  Supreme  Being,  in  another  by 
those  who  attribute  Personality  to  the  God  of  ReHgion, 
but  refuse  to  identify  the  God  of  Religion  with  the 
Absolute  or  Ultimate  Reality. 

I  will  first  call  your  attention  to  the  former  way  of 
»  Sartor  Resartus,  ii.  9. 


186  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

stating  the  difficulty  and  ask  you  to  examine  the  supposed 
incompatibility  of  the  existence  of  Evil  with  the  affirma- 
tion of  Personality  in  a  Being  who  is  conceived  to  be  the 
Cause  of  the  Universe. 

There  is  no  doubt  that,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  events, 
if  something  has  taken  place  which  we  think  ought  not 
to  have  happened,  and  it  seems  probable  that  it  is  due  to 
human  activity,  we  ask  :  '  Who  is  to  blame  for  this  ?  ' 
This  would  be  our  first  question  did  we  find  a  corpse  with 
marks  indicating  that  death  was  due  to  violence.  If, 
however,  on  further  investigation  it  is  found  that  the  cause 
of  death  was  not  a  murderous  assault  by  a  human  being 
but  a  stroke  of  lightning,  we  cease  to  inquire  who  is  to 
blame.  There  was  in  that  case  no  personal  agency  con- 
cerned in  bringing  about  the  sad  occurrence  ;  and  with  the 
elimination  of  personality  there  is  eliminated  also  all 
possibility  of  praise  or  censure.  If  death  from  lightning 
could  be  considered  as  in  literal  fact  what  it  is  called  in 
the  language  of  English  law,  an  '  act  of  God,'  moral 
predicates  would  become  applicable  to  it,  and,  the  world 
being  such  as  we  find  it,  if  the  whole  course  of  events  is 
to  be  attributed  to  a  person  or  persons,  we  must,  it  is 
said,  consider  that  person  or  those  persons  as  deficient 
either  in  goodness  or  in  power.  But  if  we  refuse  to 
suppose  personal  agency  concerned  at  all  in  the  production 
of  that  great  majority  of  events  which  cannot  be  referred 
to  human  volitions,  we  get  rid  (so  it  is  sometimes  supposed) 
of  any  need  to  assign  blame  for  the  presence  of  Evil  in  the 
universe  at  all ;  and  the  controversy  about  the  origin  of 
Evil  falls  to  the  ground. 

I  question,  however,  whether  we  are  not  here  in  danger 
of  slipping  into  the  very  common  error  of  taking  for 
granted  that  an  argument  valid  within  a  restricted  field 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  187 

must  of  necessity  be  no  less  valid  when  extended  to  the 
whole  universe  of  reality.  For  the  purpose  of  the  coroner's 
jury  it  is  sufficient  to  have  ascertained  that  a  person 
found  dead  was  not  killed  by  any  one  within  the  juris- 
diction of  the  law  of  the  land  ;  so  that,  even  though  the 
death  were  undoubtedly  due  to  human  agency,  it  may  no 
further  concern  the  law,  if  that  agency — suppose  it  that 
of  a  belligerent  enemy — is  uncontrollable  by  any  power 
at  the  disposition  of  the  court.  Hence  we  see  '  the  act 
of  God  and  of  the  King's  enemies  '  often  coupled  together 
in  legal  documents.  The  judicial  chronicler  or  historian 
has  a  less  restricted  range  ;  his  judgment  is  not  limited 
by  a  jurisdiction,  and  he  will  appraise  human  agency 
wherever  it  is  found.  But  where  he  finds  none  such — 
where  an  event  is  traceable  to  the  activity  of  irrational 
animals  or  to  the  forces  of  inanimate  nature — there  he 
recognizes  a  limit  to  his  function  of  distributing  praise 
or  blame.  Yet  this  no  more  debars  a  further  question 
arising  about  these  events,  if  there  be  reason  to  think 
a  personality  other  than  human  to  be  concerned  in  their 
production,  than  the  necessary  silence  of  the  law  of  any 
country  respecting  the  responsibility  of  that  country's 
enemies  for  their  acts  of  war  renders  those  acts  immune 
from  moral  censure. 

And,  do  what  we  will,  such  further  questions  must 
inevitably  arise.  We  may  be  rightly  on  our  guard  against 
transferring  in  a  naive  and  uncritical  fashion  predicates 
applicable  to  members  of  a  society  of  human  beings  to 
the  ultimate  Ground  of  all  existence.  But  in  the  long 
run  we  cannot  avoid  the  question  of  the  significance  to 
be  assigned  to  our  moral  consciousness  in  the  formation 
of  our  general  view  of  the  world.  It  has  been  an  unfor- 
tunate circumstance  that  what  is  known  as  Kant's  moral 


188  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

argument  *  for  the  existence  of  God — upon  which  that 
philosopher  reHed  as  a  sufficient  basis  for  Rehgion  after 
the  overthrow  of  the  old  metaphysical  proofs  which  he 
believed  himself  to  have  brought  about  by  the  discussions 
in  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason — was  expressed  by  him 
in  an  awkward  and  unimpressive  form  which  has  led 
to  less  than  justice  being  done  to  the  thought  which  under- 
lies it.  No  one  of  course  has  insisted  more  strongly  than 
Kant  that  absolute  disinterestedness  is  the  very  hall 
mark  of  genuine  morality ;  and  when  we  find  him  going 
on  to  contend  that  there  must  be  a  Moral  Governor  of 
the  Universe  to  award  happiness  to  the  virtue  which 
deserves  it,  it  is  easy  to  think  that  he  has  fallen,  perhaps 
in  consequence  of  a  timid  deference  to  established  tradi- 
tion, from  the  height  of  his  great  argument  to  the  level 
of  a  crude  theological  utilitarianism  like  that  of  Paley. 
But  in  fact  the  more  we  emphasize  the  independence  of 
the  moral  consciousness  upon  considerations  of  private 
advantage,  the  more  we  exalt  the  "  manifest  authority  " 
(to  use  Butler's  famous  phrase  3)  of  the  Law  which  speaks 
in  us  by  the  voice  of  conscience,  the  more  difficult  is  it 
to  find  intellectual  satisfaction  in  regarding  that  voice 
as  one  crying  in  the  wilderness  of  an  alien  world,  whose 
course  is  in  continual  contradiction  with  what  we  should 
expect  in  a  realm  wherein  its  authority  should  be  recog- 
nized and  obeyed. 

We  may  appreciate  to  the  full  the  heroic  temper  which 
inspired  Huxley's  doctrine  of  '  ethics  '  as  running  counter 
to    '  evolution,'  4   and   which   has    since    found   eloquent 

»  See  Kritik  der  praktischen  Vernunft  I.  Th.  II.  B.  II.  Hpts.  V. 
{Werke,  ed.  Hart.  v.  pp.  130  ff.)  ;  Kriiik  der  Urieilskraft,  §  87 
{Werke,  ed.  Hart.  v.  pp.  461  ff.). 

3  Second  Sermon  on  Human  Nature. 

4  In  his  Romanes  Lecture  on  Evolution  and  Ethics. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  SIN  189 

utterance  in  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell's  description  of  the 
"  free  man's  worship."  5  Who  can  but  admire  the  spirit 
of  men  who  thus  resolve,  like  Louis  Stevenson's  "  old 
rover  with  his  axe  "  ^  to  enlist  in  defence  of  a  cause  acknow- 
ledged to  be  noble  with  clear  foresight  of  its  inevitable 
defeat  ?  We  may  even  acknowledge  that  perhaps  only 
by  means  of  such  Promethean  defiance  of  the  powers 
that  be  could  Religion  be  purified  from  the  spirit  of  the 
facile — one  may  even  say  the  smug — acquiescence  in  the 
arrangements  of  Divine  Providence  which  had  charac- 
terized much  of  the  popular  and  some  of  the  philosophical 
theology  of  an  age  against  which  we  are  still  in  revolt, 
though  its  heyday  is  now  long  past.  But  surely  we 
must  yet  admit  that  a  world  which  can  produce  a  hunger 
and  thirst  after  righteousness  and  yet  nowhere  contain 
the  means  of  satisfying  them  is  a  world  fundamentally 
incoherent  and  irrational.  If,  then,  we  pass  a  moral 
judgment  upon  the  world  to  the  extent  of  seeking  a  solution 
of  the  problem  of  the  existence  of  Evil  therein,  we  are 
not  merely  carrying  out  the  consequences  of  a  previous 
assumption,  which  we  need  not  have  made,  that  the  Cause 
of  all  things  is  personal  and  so  liable  to  be  judged  as  such. 
We  are  asking  a  question  we  must  needs  have  asked 
even  though  that  assumption  had  not  been  made  at  all. 
Thus  I  do  not  think  that  we  can  get  rid  of  the  burden  of 
the  problem  of  the  existence  of  Evil,  especially  of  moral 
evil  or  Sin,  simply  by  denying  personality  to  the  Supreme 
Being. 

If  this  be  our  conclusion,  and  if  our  religious  experience 
be  found  to  imply  as  its  foundation  a  personal  relation 

5  Reprinted  in  his  Philosophical  Essays  (igio)  and  in  MysticiSfn 
and  Logic  (1918). 

6  In  his  Fable  of  '  Faith,  Half-Faith,  and  No  Faith  at  all.' 


190  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

to  God,  we  may  perhaps  be  led  to  think  that  a  view  whfch 
gives  due  recognition  to  this  relation  is  so  far  from  espe- 
cially finding  the  existence  of  Evil  a  stumbling-block  that, 
if  it  imparts  to  the  sense  of  Sin  a  peculiar  poignancy,  it 
also  provides  it  with  a  more  intelligible  setting  than  any 
other  view.  The  whole  cycle  of  ideas  which  we  connect 
with  such  words  as  Probation,  Judgment,  Atonement, 
Repentance,  Forgiveness,  may  perhaps  be  expressed 
in  terms  which  avoid  the  acknowledgment  of  a  personal 
relation  between  the  individual  sinner  and  that  (however 
we  may  describe  it)  by  which  he  is  tested  and  put  in  his 
place,  with  which  he  may  know  himself  to  be  in  harmony 
or  out  of  harmony,  and  upon  whose  resources  he  must 
draw  for  any  recovery  or  improvement.  But  they  will 
gain  infinitely  in  significance,  will  strike  home  with  a 
vastly  increased  sense  of  reality,  when  they  are  translated 
into  the  language  of  a  personal  relation  to  a  Spirit  wherein 
"  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,"?  and  yet  in  the 
drama  of  our  existence  distinguish  ourselves  from  it,  in 
order  to  be  able  to  unite  ourselves  again  with  it  by  an 
act  of  free  and  voluntary  self-surrender.  The  possibility 
of  Sin  is  after  all  involved  in  freedom  to  choose  the  good  ; 
and  it  would  seem  meaningless  to  find  a  new  problem  in 
the  reality  of  what  is  already  understood  to  be  in  a  true 
sense  possible. 

To  avoid  any  misunderstanding,  I  would  here  repeat 
that  I  am  only  attempting  to  meet  the  objection  to  the 
admission  of  Personality  in  God  which  is  drawn  from  the 
existence  of  moral  evil.  I  am  not  pretending  to  discuss 
the  whole  problem  of  Evil ;  and  I  am  quite  well  aware  of 
many  points  in  what  I  have  just  said  on  which  the  critics 
might  join  issue  with  me.     Thus  one  critic  might  challenge 

7  Acts    xvii.  28. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  191 

my  reference  to  freedom  as  begging  the  question  so  long 
debated  between  the  partisans  of  Liberty  and  Neces- 
sity ;  another  my  assumption  that  the  sense  of  Sin  is 
not  an  irrational  survival  of  primitive  superstition,  alto- 
gether without  the  value  in  the  interpretation  of  Reality 
which  I  have  attributed  to  it.  Others,  again,  might 
dispute  my  right  to  take  for  granted  that  even  in  the 
ultimate  Reality,  in  the  Absolute,  the  discords  and  seeming 
contradictions  of  the  world  of  appearance  are  laid  to  rest  ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  followers  of  Mr.  Bradley  or 
Mr.  Bosanquet  might  contend  that  I  had  overlooked 
the  failure  of  MoraHty,  when  tried  by  the  criterion  of  '  non- 
contradiction,' 8  to  make  good  a  claim  to  ultimate  reality. 

In  reply  to  such  strictures  I  can  only  say  at  present 
that  I  am  by  no  means  insensible  to  the  importance  of 
these  various  issues  which  I  may  seem  to  have  left  on  one 
side  ;  where  I  have  by  implication  taken  a  side  in  any 
one  of  them,  it  is  because  I  conceive  that  side  to  have 
the  better  arguments  in  its  favour  ;  and  further,  that  I 
do  not  think  that  a  different  judgment  upon  these  matters, 
while  it  might  well  have  altered  my  view  of  the  importance 
of  the  whole  question,  would  have  affected  the  special 
point  at  issue.  That  point  is  merely  this  :  that  the 
recognition  of  Personality  in  God  harmonizes  better 
than  any  other  conception  of  the  Supreme  Reality  with 
the  experience  for  which  the  problem  of  Evil  reveals 
itself  in  its  acutest  form,  namely  with  the  experience 
which  may  be  described  as  that  of  '  conviction  of  Sin.' 

We  may  now  turn  to  the  other  way  in  which  the  same 

question  we  have  just  been  examining  may  be  expressed 

from  an  opposite  point  of  view  by  those  who,  holding  to 

Divine  Personality,  think  that  in  the  existence  of  Evil, 

8  See  above,  Lecture  V.  p.  125. 


192  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

and  in  particular  of  moral  evil,  they  have  the  strongest 
possible  argument  for  distinguishing  God,  the  object  of 
Rehgion,     from     the     Absolute,     the     all-comprehending 
Reality.     Only  thus,  they  think,  can  God  be  relieved  of 
responsibility  for  the  evil  in  the  world  ;    and  only  if  he 
be  relieved  of    that  responsibility  can  he  be  a  possible 
object  of   our  unqualified  reverence.     This,   however,   he 
may  be,  if  he  be  not  the  all-comprehending  Being,  but  a 
Being  comprehended  in  one  universe   along  with  other 
beings  of  whose  existence  either  he  is  not  the  cause  at 
all,  or,  if  he  is  the  cause  of  it,  is  so  only  under  conditions 
due  to  a  necessity  to  which  he  himself  is  subject,  and  to 
the  limitations  imposed  by  which  he  must  perforce  submit. 
He  is,  on  this  showing,  not  a  Being  of  boundless  power  ; 
but  he  may  be  a  Being  of  boundless  benevolence.     Only 
the  effects  of  his  benevolence  are  determined  within  certain 
bounds  by  the  eternal  nature  of  things,  himself  included. 
To  this  way  of  thinking,  however,  there  appears  to  me 
to  be  one  fatal  objection.     It  relieves  God  of  the  responsi- 
bility for  the  evil  in  the  world  only  at  the  cost  of  depriving 
him  of  Godhead.     I  do  not  say  that  such  a  Being  as  the 
champions  of  this  view  describe  under  the  name  of  God 
would  not  be  a  Being  whom  we  could  venerate,  with  the 
veneration  which  we  pay  to  the  saints  and  heroes  of  our 
race,    though,    if    you    will,    indefinitely    increased.     But 
what  he  would  not  be,  is  what,  when  once  we  have  come 
to  mean  no  less  than  this  by  God,  we  cannot,  I  feel  sure, 
cease  to  demand  in  whatever  is  offered  to  us  under  that 
name.     He   would    not    be,    in    a   word,    the    '  Supreme 
Being.'     He  would  not  be,  so  to  put  it,  at  the  back  of 
everything.     There  would  be  for  him  as  for  us  a  myste- 
rious background.     It  seems  to  me  a  point  in  which  the 
theology  of  Mr.  Wells's  '  new  religion  '  has  an  advantage 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  SIN  193 

over  that  of  some  who  agree  with  him  in  affirming  their 
God  to  be  finite,  while  demurring  to  his  distinction  of 
God  from  what  he  calls  the  '  Veiled  Being,'  that  it  recog- 
nizes this  consequence  of  the  view  in  which  he  and  they 
are  at  one. 

The  dogmas  of  no  religion  are  to  be  taken  by  us  here  as 
authoritative.  But  religious  dogmas  may  prove  suggestive 
to  us,  just  as  do  other  speculations  which  have  appeared 
in  the  course  of  the  history  of  thought  upon  these  subjects. 
And  so  it  may  be  worth  pointing  out  that,  in  affirming 
the  bond  of  unity  between  all  who  share  mediately  or 
immediately  in  the  Divine  Life  to  be  a  Spirit  not  inde- 
pendent of,  but  '  proceeding  from  '  both  Father  and  Son, 
a  Spirit  whose  concrete  reality  is  neither  greater  nor  less 
than  that  of  those  from  whom  it  proceeds  (so  that  it  is 
called  a  person  just  as  they  are),  the  Christian  Church 
has  decidedly  taken  up  a  position  adverse  to  the  view 
which  sets  God  against  the  background  of  a  necessity 
which  limits  from  without,  as  it  were,  the  eternal  pro- 
cess of  love  wherein  the  Divine  Life  is  conceived  by  the 
Christian  religion  to  consist. 

What  I  have  attempted  to  show  in  these  last  observa- 
tions is  that  the  existence  of  Evil,  though  it  must  always 
present  itself  as  a  problem  for  the  Philosophy  of  Religion, 
does  not,  as  is  urged  from  two  opposite  quarters,  so 
especially  affect  the  acknowledgment  of  Personahty  in 
God  as  to  put  us  to  a  choice  between  denying  to  God 
either  personality  or  that,  infinity  '  (if  we  are  so  to  call 
it)  without  which,  unless  I  am  completely  mistaken,  he 
cannot  really  be  at  all  what  a  philosophically  cultivated 
theology  can  mean  by  God.  But  we  have  still  to  ask 
ourselves  whether  the  consciousness  of  Sin  in  ourselves 
must   modify  that   conception  of  the   relation  between 


194  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

our  spirits  and  the  divine  Spirit  which  we  saw  reason 
in  the  last  Lecture  for  adopting,  and,  if  it  must,  then  in 
what  way. 

A  young  EngUsh  theologian,  Mr.  Oliver  Quick,  has 
lately  dwelt  in  an  interesting  manner  upon  the  important 
fact  that  the  problem  of  Sin  cannot  satisfactorily  be  treated 
by  sinners  as  a  merely  speculative  problem. 9  In  so 
far  as  we  are  not  concerned  to  fight  against  Sin  and  over- 
come it  we  are  not  really  conscious  of  it  as  sin.  We  are 
only  conscious  of  a  certain  kind  of  action,  which,  under 
certain  circumstances,  done  thus,  here,  now,  and  so 
forth,  is  sinful,  but  under  other  circumstances  would  be 
nothing  of  the  kind.  This  is  a  fact  well  worth  bearing 
in  mind,  when  we  approach  the  question  how  our  spirits, 
conscious  as  they  are  of  sin,  can  be  taken  up  into  the 
divine  life,  and  share  in  that  intercourse  of  love  the 
presence  of  which  therein  we  hold  to  be  presupposed 
in  the  personal  relation  to  God  whereof  we  have  experi- 
ence in  religion.  We  are  all  famihar  with  a  solution 
of  this  problem  expressed  in  the  form  of  a  myth  (if  we 
are  to  call  that  notion  of  a  Mediator,  the  value  of  which 
we  saw  in  the  last  Lecture,  by  this  name  of  '  myth,' 
remembering,  as  we  use  that  word,  the  dignity  of  its 
Platonic  associations  rather  than  the  common  custom 
of  contrasting  it  with  the  '  truth  ').  The  mediator  may 
be  viewed  not  merely  as  the  Perfecter  but  also  as  the 
Redeemer  ;  and  the  religious  spirit  may  be  led  to  a  satis- 
faction in  the  whole  process  which  can  find  utterance  in 
those  bold  words  of  the  famous  hymn  for  Easter  Eve  : — 

O  fclix  culpa,  quae  tantum  et  talem  meruit  habere  Redemptorem. 

It  is  not  altogether  surprising  that  to  some  there  has 
9  Essays  in  Orthodoxy    p.  78  ff. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  195 

seemed  to  be  an  utter  incompatibility  between  a  genuine 
sense  of  the  evil  of  Sin  and  the  contemplation,  suggested 
by  those  words,  of  such  a  transcendence  of  sin  as  to 
permit  of  satisfaction  in  its  mediation  of  an  ultimate 
good  higher  than  without  it  could  (for  what  we  know) 
have  been  attained.  On  this  subject,  however,  I  will 
not  dwell  further,  except  to  point  out  that  (as  I  have 
elsewhere  tried  to  show  1°)  the  thought  impHed  in  the 
hymn  which  I  have  just  quoted  should  not  really  lead, 
as  its  critics  would  doubtless  insist  that  it  is  logically 
bound  to  lead,  to  regarding  sin  as  no  sin.  For  since  sin 
can  only  be  done  away  by  atonement,  and  the  indispensable 
condition  of  an  effective  atonement  is  repentance,  there  is 
no  room  for  the  antinomian  attitude,  as  we  may  call  it, 
in  which  one  could  say  '  Let  us  do  evil  that  good  may 
come  ;  '  "  an  attitude  which  might  attempt  to  justify 
itself  by  an  appeal  to  the  sentiment  of  the  apostrophe 
0  felix  culpa  !  Only  through  repentance  can  a  sinful 
will  pass  into  a  good  will  :  and  "  the  repentance  which  a 
man  could  intend  while  sinning  would  be  no  real  repent- 
ance at  all.  Real  repentance  could  only  supervene 
through  a  complete  change  of  will  upon  the  state  in  which 
a  man  should  set  out  to  sin  with  the  intention  of  repenting 
and  then  obtaining  something  better  than  innocence."  " 
Yet  I  do  not  think  that  Religion  can  finally  acquiesce 
in  the  view  that,  as  it  has  been  put  in  Christian  language 
by  a  modern  mystic  (the  originality  of  whose  genius 
deserves  more  recognition  than  it  has  received)  :  "If 
God  had  really  known  all  from  the  beginning,  he  would 
not  have  allowed  such  circumstances  to  arise  as  would 

•o  Problems  in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  p.  274  ff. 

"  See  Rom.  iii.  8. 

ij  Problems,  loc.  supra  cit.     Cp   Dante,  Inferno,  xxvii.  118  ff. 


196  GOD   AND   PliRSONALITY 

make  the  Passion  necessary."  Rather  it  must  assure 
itself  that,  in  the  words  of  the  same  writer,  "  God  does 
not  merely  get  out  of  evil  by  a  wonderful  device,  leaving 
the  evil  as  a  thing  that  had  better  not  have  been."  »3 

In  my  last  Lecture  I  ventured  to  suggest  that  Signor 
Benedetto  Croce  had  by  his  observations  upon  Religion 
shown  himself  but  indifferently  well  qualified  for  forming 
an  adequate  estimate  of  the  contribution  made  by  religious 
experience  toward  our  knowledge  of  Reality.  But  it  has 
perhaps  for  this  very  reason  been  easier  for  him  than  for 
one  better  equipped  in  this  respect  to  elaborate  what 
in  the  phraseology  of  modern  theology  may  be  called  a 
doctrine  of  mere  immanence  ;  for  we  have  seen  reason 
to  think  that  Religion  can  never  dispense  with  tran- 
scendence, although  it  can  dispense  with  the  representation 
of  its  transcendent  object  as  personal.  The  importance 
assigned  to  History  in  Signor  Croce's  philosophy  gives 
to  it  an  advantage  over  that  of  Spinoza,  who,  as  we  saw 
in  an  earlier  Lecture,  also  put  forward  an  extreme  doctrine 
of  immanence.  But  I  think  that  a  comparison  of  the  two 
systems  will  suggest  that  our  contemporary's  philosophy 
is,  after  all,  even  a  more  extreme  doctrine  of  immanence 
than  his  predecessor's  ;  and  that  this  is  not  unconnected 
with  the  fact  that,  while  the  great  Jewish  thinker  found 
a  religion  in  his  philosophy,  Signor  Croce  (however  he  may 
sometimes  claim  to  have  done  the  like)  has  only  found 
his  philosophy  enable  him  to   dispense  with  a  religion. 

Nevertheless  we  shall  find  it  instructive  to  consider 
briefly  in  relation  to  our  topic  of  Divine  Personality  the 
principle  involved  in  Signor  Croce's  theology  of  immanence. 
It  is,  I  think,  the  same  principle  which  is  expressed  in 
Hegel's  doctrine  that  the  Absolute  cannot  be  understood 
»3  R,  M.  Benson,  Spiritual  Readings  for  Advent,  p.  286. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  197 

except  as  a  '  result,'  m  to  the  knowledge  of  which  there 
can  be  no  shorter  way  than  that  of  patiently  tracing  out  all 
the  stages  of  the  evolution  in  which  its  very  life  and  being 
consist.  The  principle  is  also  perhaps  related  not  very 
distantly  to  James's  repudiation  of  a  '  block-universe.'  '5 
It  is  the  principle  that  there  is  not  to  be  sought  beyond 
the  Reality  which  lives  and  moves  and  develops  around 
us  and  within  us,  whereof  we  ourselves  are  a  product 
and  a  part,  some  other  yet  more  real  Being  complete  in 
itself  apart  from  that  living  process  which  is  the  history 
of  the  world,  a  process  that  is  going  on  still  and  is  never 
finished.  In  accordance  with  this  principle  Signor  Croce 
will  not  hear  of  a  God  "  before  the  world  was  "  or  of  a 
Last  Judgment  to  be  passed,  superfluously  enough,  upon 
a  world  which  has  already  come  to  an  end  and  is  no  more.'^ 
The  divine  transcendence  which  he  is  concerned  to  deny 
is  a  transcendence  of  the  historic  process  of  which  our 
lives  are  an  integral  part  and  which  is  for  him  the  one 
and  only  Reality. 

Now  I  think  we  need  have  no  hesitation  in  admitting 
that,  whatever  obligation  members  of  particular  religious 
communities  may  sometimes  have  considered  themselves 
to  be  under  to  the  letter  of  their  sacred  books.  Religion 
has  no  real  interest  in  maintaining  (in  accordance  with 
the  theology  of  the  Wandering  Jew  in  Shelley's  Queen  Mab) 
that  God  awoke  "  from  an  eternity  of  idleness  "  ^7  to 
create  the  world,  nor  yet  that  he  is  to  relapse  into 
inactivity  after  the  destruction  of  the  world  which  he 

M  See  Phdnom.  des  Geisies,  Vorrede  (Werke,  ii.  p.  15). 

'5  The  phrase  is  used  by  James  in  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  pp.  310, 
328. 

•6  See  Saggio  sullo  Hegel  (ed.  1913).  p.  137  (Eng.  tr.  p.  201)  ; 
Filosofia  della  Pratica,  pt.    i,  s.  i,  c.  6,  p.  65  (Eng.  tr.  p.  93). 

»7  Queen  Mab,  §  7. 


198  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

then  created.  The  reHgious  experience  of  communion 
with  God  is  an  experience  of  communion  not  with  a 
prehistoric  or  post-historic   Being,  but  with  a  living  God. 

Again,  all  philosophy  to  which  the  supreme  Reality  is 
Spirit — and  Signor  Croce's  is  such  a  philosophy — even  if, 
like  Signor  Croce's,  it  repudiates  any  suggestion  of  a 
Reality  transcending  the  unbeginning  and  unending 
series  of  acts  which  constitute  the  history  or  evolution 
of  the  world,  makes  affirmations  concerning  the  nature 
and  character  which  is  manifested  in  this  perpetual 
process.  According  to  Signor  Croce  ^^  himself,  we  may 
even  describe  this  process  as  directed  by  a  Providence, 
but  by  a  Providence  which  only  "  becomes  actual  in 
individuals  and  acts  not  on  them  but  in  them."  "  This 
affirmation  of  Providence,"  he  goes  on  to  declare,  "  is 
not  conjecture  or  faith  but  evidence  of  reason."  But 
what  is  this  evidence  ?  He  goes  on  to  tell  us.  "  Who 
would  feel  in  him  the  strength  of  life  without  such  an 
intimate  persuasion  ?  Whence  could  he  draw  resignation 
in  sorrow,  encouragement  to  endure  ?  Surely  what  the 
religious  man  says  with  the  woivls  '  Let  us  leave  it  in  God's 
hands  '  is  said  also  by  the  man  of  reason  with  those  other 
words  '  Courage  and  forward.'  "  There  seems  to  me, 
indeed,  to  be  so  great  a  difference  between  the  temper  of 
these  two  exclamations  that  I  cannot  but  consider  one 
who,  with  Signor  Croce,  sees  no  more  in  the  former  than 
in  the  latter  as  thereby  showing  himself  a  stranger  to 
genuine  religious  experience.  But  it  is  not  upon  this 
point  that  I  would  dwell  here.  I  would  rather  ask  whether 
such  a  persuasion  as  the  Italian -philosopher  here  speaks 
of,  while  I  should  be  the  last  to  deny  it  to  be  the  voice 
of  Reason  within  us,  is  not  just  what  has  usually  been 

■8  Filos.  della  Pratica,  pt.  i,  s.  2,  c.  5,  pp.  178  f.  (Eng.  tr.  p.  257). 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  SIN  199 

meant  by  '  faith  '  ;  for  example,  in  the  famous  definition 
by  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  :  "  The  assur- 
ance of  things  hoped  for,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen  "  '9 
things  not  seen  because,  if  Signor  Croce  be  right,  they  are 
not  yet  made.  It  is  a  reasonable  faith  indeed,  though 
not  what  the  rationahstic  philosophy  which  is  dominant 
in  popular  thought  would  recognize  at  once  as  Reason  ; 
but  Signor  Croce  is  ready  to  admit  that  there  is  sometimes 
more  philosophy  in  Religion,  "  troubled  by  phantoms  "  =« 
though  it  be,  than  in  crude  Rationalism. 

It  is  a  cardinal  point  in  Signor  Croce's  philosophy 
that  mystery  is  to  be  found  only  in  History,  the  future 
course  of  which  cannot  be  foreseen  and  the  detail  of 
which  must  be  first  enacted  before  it  can  be  known  ;  in 
Philosophy,  which  is  exclusively  concerned  with  uni- 
versals,  there  is  no  place  for  mystery.  But  it  is  precisely 
the  presence  of  the  same  eternal  and  universal  Spirit 
at  every  point  of  the  historical  process  which  enables 
Signor  Croce  to  affirm  the  infinite  progress  of  man.^i 
though  for  him  neither  man  nor  God  can  know  the  concrete 
forms  that  progress  will  assume.  And  it  is  this  presence 
that  I  should  describe  as  a  mystery,  and  a  mystery  in 
Philosophy  ;  and  this  is  made  not  more  but  rather  less 
obscure  in  the  light  of  the  religious  experience  of  a  personal 
relation  of  our  individual  spirits  to  the  Spirit  "  which 
worketh  in  us  both  to  will  and  to  do."  22  The  confidence 
which  Signor  Croce  has  in  the  nature  and  character  of 
this  Spirit  is  of  a  kind  which  we  can  hardly  describe 
except  in  terms  which  are  most  properly  applied  to  the 
kind  of  confidence  which  we  have  in  a  person  ;    and  it 

»9  Heb.  xi.   I. 

"  Filos.  delta  Pratica,  pt.  ii.  s.  2,  c,  2,  p.  314  (Eng.  tr.  p.  450). 

2'  Ibid.  Eng.  tr.  p.  260.  "  Philipp.  ii.  13- 


200  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

cannot  be  justified  except  by  such  a  view  of  the  relation 

of  this  Spirit  to  our  individual  spirits  as  is  expressed  in 

religious  language  and  realized  by  our  individual  spirits 

in  their  religious  experience.     I   do  not   deny,   I  rather 

desire  strongly  to  emphasize,   that   religious   experience 

differs  from  the  experience  of  acquaintance  with  finite 

persons  in  that  it  is  freed  from  what  is  merely  casual  and 

empirical  in  the  latter  23  ;    just  as,  on  the  other  hand,  it 

differs   from   the  knowledge   of   universals,  principles,  or 

laws   by   the   presence  therein   of   that   peculiar   rapport 

(I  know  no  English  word  so  fitting  to  express  my  meaning) 

which    elsewhere    exists    only    between    two    persons    in 

intimate    mutual    intercourse.     The    condescending,    not 

to  say  arrogant,  language  held  by  Signer  Croce  towards 

those  who,  though  not  without  pretension  to  philosophy, 

are  yet  not  ready  to  leave  Religion  behind  them  as  "  a 

creed  outworn  "  24  which  for  the  philosopher  has  already 

accomplished  its  work  and  is  now  ready  to  vanish  away, 

ought  not  to  divert  our  attention  from  a  mystery  which 

he  has  after  all  failed  to  banish  from  his  own  philosophy, 

and  our  only   reasonable   attitude   to  which  is  what  we 

call   Religion. 

I  said  just  now,   perhaps  somewhat  too  hastily,  that 

Signor  Croce  had  rather  considered  himself  as  dispensed 

by  philosophy  from  the  need  of  a  religion  than  had,  like 

Spinoza,  found  a  religion  in  his  philosophy.      For  after 

all  there  is  religion  in  Signor  Croce's  philosophy,  which, 

indeed,  he  admits  will,  when  it  has  absorbed   Religion, 

"  have  the  value  of  true  and  complete  Religion  "  25  and  if 

it  does  not  utter  itself  in  religious  language  and  religious 

»3  Cp.  The  Notion  of  Revelation  (Pan-Anglican  Paper),  p.  4. 
24  Wordsworth's  sonnet,  "  The  world  is  too  much  with  us." 
»s  See  The  Task  of  Logic  in  Windelband  and  Ruge's  Encyclopcedia 
of  the  Philosophical  Sciences,  Eng.  ed.  p.  210. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  SIN  201 

practice,  that  is  only  on  account  of  a  prejudice  against 
the  associations  of  such  langu9.ge  and  practice  which  is 
very  evident  in  Signor  Croce's  writings,  but  which  one 
need  not  share  in  order  to  profit  by  what  is  of  permanent 
value  in  his  speculations. 

What  can  better  deserve  the  name  of  a  mystery  than 
that  contradiction  in  its  own  nature  which  perpetually 
distracts  and  baffies  the  human  soul  when  it  realizes  that 
it  is  "  haunted  for  ever  by  the  eternal  Mind  "  26  and  unable 
to  set  limits  to  the  range  of  its  thought  or  the  scope  of 
its  concern,  and  yet  notwithstanding  is  at  the  very  same 
time  hurried  along  without  pause  by  the  ever-rolling 
stream  of  Time,  "  never  continuing  in  one  stay,"  27  but 
each  moment  leaving  something  of  its  past  self  behind 
and  always  beset  with  intimations  of  mortality  ? 

No  doubt  the  name  of  a  mystery  is  misapplied  when 
no  more  is  meant  than  that  some  fundamental  feature  of 
our  experience  cannot  be  explained  in  terms  of  something 
else.  The  relation  of  the  Particular  to  the  Universal 
is  not  a  mystery  because  it  is  not  a  case  of  the  relation 
borne  by  a  copy  to  its  archetype  or  by  the  part  of  a  body 
to  the  body  of  which  it  is  a  part.  We  understand  quite 
well  what  it  is  ;  and,  if  we  did  not,  the  simplest  con- 
versation would  soon  become  unintelligible  to  us.  In 
like  manner  the  conception  of  Time  involves  at  once  the 
evanescence  of  its  successive  moments  and  the  persistence 
of  its  continuous  course  ;  and  the  relation  of  the  former 
to  the  latter  factor  in  so  familiar  and  indispensable  a 
notion  is  not  the  less  understood  because  any  attempted 
comparison  of  it  to  something  else  will  prove  to  be  in  some 
respects  inadequate.   To  the  contemplating  mind  Universal 

^6  Wordsworth,   Ode  cm  Intimations  of  Immortality,  §  8. 
»7  Burial  Service  :    "  Man  that  is  born  of  a  woman,"  etc. 


202  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

and  Particular,  or  again  the  permanence  and  the  lapse 
of  Time,  are  mutually  correlative,  each  understood  in 
its  relation  to  the  other,  and  neither  otherwise  intelligible 
or  real.  We  may  justly  say  that  there  is  no  '  mystery  ' 
here,  properly  so  called. 

But  the  case  is  otherwise  when  the  Soul  turns  back 
upon  itself  and  reflects  upon  its  own  nature,  as  a  particular 
aware  of  itself  as  a  particular,  as  transient  but  conscious 
of  its  transiency  ;  and  as,  in  that  awareness,  that  conscious- 
ness of  its  transiency,  apprehending  its  universal  and 
eternal  nature  as  its  own,  yet  not  its  own  ;  as  its  unrealized 
and  perhaps  unrealizable  ideal,  its  unattained  and 
perhaps  unattainable  perfection.  I  cannot  persuade 
myself  that  the  word  '  mystery  '  is  not  applicable  here, 
just  as  Signor  Croce  admits  it  to  be  applicable  to  the 
anticipation  of  a  future  the  detail  of  which,  because  it 
does  not  yet  exist,  cannot  from  the  very  nature  of  the 
case  be  foreseen  by  the  anticipating  mind. 

Professor  Alexander,  in  his  Gifford  Lectures  at  Glasgow, 
has  just  been  contending  that  the  religious  consciousness 
witnesses  to  the  reality  of  such  an  ideal,  yet  not  to  its 
actuality.  The  world  is  (he  tells  us)  pregnant  with  deity, 
and  in  Religion  we  are  aware  that  it  is  so,  but  God  is  not 
yet  born.  We  may,  indeed,  learn  from  the  sacred  stories 
of  Buddhism  and  of  Christianity  28  that  the  thought  of 
worship  paid  to  a  divine  Lord  while  yet  in  his  mother's 
womb  has  nothing  in  it  uncongenial  to  the  temper  of 
religion  ;  but  the  context,  legendary  and  doctrinal,  of 
these  same  stories  testifies  not  less  unequivocally  to  the 
impossibility  of  resting  in  the  thought  of  the  object  of 
worship  as  not  yet  actual.  The  future  Buddha  as  soon 
as  born  miraculously  proclaims  his  own  greatness  and  is 
-^  See  Luke  i.  43  ff. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  203 

adored  by  a  venerable  sage  and  by  his  own  father  ;  and 
he  is  further  described  as  descending  into  his  mother's 
womb  from  an  assembly  of  glorified  beings,  the  presidency 
among  whom  he  is  said  in  some  later  forms  of  the  story 
to  have  left  to  the  being  who  is  to  be  the  Buddha  of  the 
next  age,  and  who  even  now  receives  prospectively  the 
veneration  of  Buddhists  in  that  capacity.29  So  too  the 
belief  of  the  Christian  Church  in  the  pre-existence  of  her 
Founder  is  already  manifest  in  the  New  Testament  in 
the  writings  of  St.  Paul  and  of  the  author  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel, 30  I  find  it  therefore  difficult  to  believe  that,  as 
Professor  Alexander  thinks,  the  embryonic  deity  of  which 
he  tells  us  will  satisfy  all  the  demands  of  theism, 

I  will,  then,  venture  to  assert,  in  opposition  to  Professor 
Alexander,  that  the  religious  consciousness  demands  not 
merely  a  prospective  but  an  actual  God,  already  possess- 
ing all  to  which  we  can  aspire.  And  yet  at  the  same 
time  it  is  no  less  true  that  it  is  not  content  to  regard 
the  worshipper's  own  religious  life — which  is  certainly 
not  yet  complete — as  without  significance  for  God. 

Hence  it  comes  about  that  the  religious  imagination 
tends  to  represent  God  to  itself  as  being  already  before- 
hand "  all  "  (to  use  an  expression  of  Green's  31)  "  which 
the  human  spirit  is  capable  of  becoming  "  :  and  then 
making  us  with  the  intention  that  we  shall  become  what 
he  already  is.  This  representation  may  be  criticized  as 
reducing  our  religious  activity  to  a  process  of  copying. 
We  seem  to  have  presented  to  us  here  a  theological 
analogue  of  that  '  copying  theory  of  truth  '  with  protests 

*9  Warren's  Buddhism  in  Translations,  pp.  42,  49  ;  Rhys  Davids' 
Buddhist  Birth  Stories,  pp.  64,  69;  Bigandet,  Legend  of  Gaitdama, 
Eng.  tr. ;  pp.  27,  41. 

30  E.g.  2  Cor.  viii.  9  ;  Philipp.  ii.  6  ;  John  i.  i  ff,  xvii.  5. 

31  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  iii.   2  §  187,  p.   198. 

O 


204  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

against  which  we  have  in  late  years  become  so  familiar  in 
discussions  of  the  nature  of  Knowledge.  We  can  under- 
stand why  a  philosophy  deeply  interested  in  maintaining 
the  creative  activity  of  the  mind  that  thinks  in  us  must 
be  inevitably  hostile  to  a  scholasticism  which,  by  reducing 
that  activity  to  a  mere  reproduction  of  a  reality  to  the 
constitution  of  which  it  makes  no  difference,  "  denies  " 
according  to  an  epigram  I  quoted  before, 32  "  the  divinity 
of  the  human  spirit  "  ;  and  why  such  a  philosophy  is 
even  suspicious  of  Religion,  since  it  seems  as  though 
Religion  cannot  be  satisfied  with  any  other  system  than 
one  which  condemns  the  human  spirit  to  walk  for  ever 
in  a  vain  show,  and  disquiet  itself  33  in  order  to  do  over 
again  less  well  what  has  already  been  done  perfectly. 

How  are  we  to  solve  the  antinomy  with  which  we  are 
thus  confronted  ? 

I  spoke  just  now  of  the  '  copying  theory  of  truth.'  This 
phrase  means,  as  I  understand  it,  an  attempt  to  explain 
what  knowing  is  by  describing  it  as  a  kind  of  copying. 
We  may  recall  how  Bacon  says  that  templum  sanctum  ad 
exemplar  mundi  in  intellectu  humano  fundamus,S'i  a  model 
of  the  universe  in  the  human  understanding.  There  can, 
of  course,  be  no  objection  taken  to  the  occasional  employ- 
ment of  such  a  metaphor,  but  there  is  a  grave  objection 
to  treating  it  as  a  serious  explanation  of  that  to  which 
such  words  as  '  copy  '  or  '  model '  are  transferred  from 
their  original  significance.  It  is  just  because  it  is  so 
treated  in  a  '  copying  theory  of  truth  '  that  such  a  theory 
is  rightly  to  be  condemned.  Knowing  is  not  copying  ;  it 
is  quite  as  familiar  an  experience  as  copying  ;  some  degree 
of   it  must  indeed  precede  any  copying,  as  in  its    turn 

3»  See  above,   Lecture  VII,  p.    156. 

33  Psa.    xxxix.    6.  34  Nov.  Org.  i    120. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  205 

copying  a  thing  may  become  a  help  towards  knowing  it 
better. 

Those  who  have  in  recent  times  been  most  severe  upon 
the  '  copying  theory  of  truth  '  have  been,  I  think,  specially 
inclined  to  insist  upon  the  point  that  it  reduced  the  real 
world  to  something  finished  and  done  with,  beyond  our 
mending — a  '  block  universe  ' — and  condemned  our 
intellectual  activity  to  a  mere  barren  repetition,  in  the 
course  of  which  nothing  substantial  is  added  to  the 
universal  stock.  And  of  the  defenders  of  any  form  of 
what  is  often  called  Realism,  which  asserts  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  object  of  knowledge  upon  the  mind's 
activity  in  knowing,  'even  though  it  may  not  vainly 
attempt  to  elucidate  the  meaning  of  knowledge  by 
a  reference  to  copying,  it  may  very  well  be  asked : 
What  difference,  on  your  view,  does  being  known  make 
to  a  thing  ? 

Now  it  seems  to  me  clear  that  in  regard  of  the  lifeless, 
so  far  forth  as  it  is  lifeless,  it  makes  no  difference.  This 
is  why  the  doctrine  of  a  Naturalist  like  Huxley  that 
consciousness  is  a  mere  '  epiphenomenon  '  and  that  of 
an  Idealist  like  Green  that  it  is  not  a  part  of  nature — 
doctrines  which,  though  advanced  in  opposite  interests, 
make  the  same  point — are  irrefutable,  so  long  as  in 
speaking  of  nature  or  phenomenon  we  are  thinking,  as 
both  Huxley  and  Green  were  thinking,  of  a  mechanical 
and  not  a  spiritual  system  ;  and  if  in  speaking  of  know- 
ledge or  science  we  are  thinking  of  the  kind  of  knowledge 
which  we  have  in  the  sciences  of  physics  and  chemistry, 35 
But  when  we  come  on  the  one  hand  to  spiritual  being 
and  specially  to  that  grade  of  spiritual  being  which  we 
designate  as  Personality,  and  on  the  other  to  that  sort 
3J  See  above,  Lecture  I,  pp.  26  f. 


206  GOD    AND    PERSONALITY 

of  knowledge  which  we  have  in  personal  intercourse  with 
our  fellow-men,  here  it  is  no  less  evident  that  to  be  known 
makes  a  very  great  difference  to  the  person  known.     The 
knowledge  which  we  call  '  acquaintance  '  cannot  be  one- 
sided.    What  has  more  to  do  with  making  us  what  we 
are  than  the  knowledge  others  have  of  us,  their  attraction 
towards  us  or  repulsion  from  us,  their  agreement  or  dissent, 
their  approval  or  disapproval,  their  hatred  or  their  love  ? 
Holding,  as  I  do,  with  the  Realists  that  it  is  to  contradict 
the    very    notion    of    Knowledge    to   suppose   its   object 
created  by  the  subject  in  the  act  of  knowing  it,  I  would 
at  the  same  time  insist  that  the    mutual  independence 
of  subject  and  object  is  at  its  maximum  in  the  lowest, 
at  its  minimum  in  the  highest  kinds  of  Knowledge.     It  is 
where  the  knowledge  makes  least  difference  to  the  thing 
known  that  the  knower  is  least  interested  in  the  existence 
of  the  thing  known  outside  of  his  possible  experience  of 
it.     In  what  may  be  called  (if  we  ignore  for  the  moment 
the  knowledge  of  God  in  Religion)  the  highest  kind  of 
Knowledge,  the  knowledge  which  we  have  of  our  fellow- 
men,  in  social  intercourse  with  them,  we  find  that  such 
intercourse  makes  all    the  difference  to   those   who   are 
parties  to  it,  and  also  that  we  are  profoundly  interested 
in  the   independent  existence   of  our  friends  ;   indeed  in 
proportion  to  our  devotion  to  them  the  greater  will  be  our 
concern  for  them,  even  apart  from  the  maintenance  of 
their  relations  to  ourselves. 36 

If  we  accept  the  testimony  of  religious  experience  to 
the  possibility  of  a  knowledge  of  God  which  can  be  in 
any  way  likened  to  our  personal  knowledge  of  the  fellow- 
men  with  whom  we  are  acquainted,  we  shall  find  here 
also  this  insistent  interest  (all  the  more  insistent  for  the 
36  Cp.  Problems  in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  p.  37. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  207 

absence  of  that  sensible  verification  which  can  be 
had  in  the  case  of  our  human  friends)  upon  the  exist- 
ence of  its  object.  It  is  in  vain  that  certain  schools 
of  thought  have  attempted  to  evade  the  difficulties 
raised  by  this  insistence  by  laying  stress  on  the  value 
which  may  be  ascribed  to  religious  emotion  or  reli- 
gious imagination  whether  or  no  God  exists  indepen- 
dently thereof.  I  do  not  deny  that  such  schools 
of  thought  have  supplied  a  much-needed  correction  of 
the  mistake  committed  by  those  who  have  sought  for 
'  proofs  of  God's  existence  '  apart  from  religious  experi- 
ence. For  this  is  as  great  a  mistake  as  it  would  be  to 
hope  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of  Beauty  apart  from 
an  aesthetic  experience.  Nevertheless  the  common  de- 
mand for  certainty  that  God  exists,  that  there  is  a  God, 
however  it  may  often  express  itself  in  forms  which  betray 
a  misconception  of  the  kind  of  proof  which  could  avail 
to  satisfy  it,  proceeds  from  a  sound  instinct.  Religion 
has  a  genuine  interest  in  the  assurance  of  the  existence 
of  God  as  no  mere  "  vision  of  fulfilled  desire  "  37  or  creature 
of  the  imagination. 

But  can  we  say  here,  as  we  ought  to  say  if  our  analogy 
is  to  hold,  that  we  believe  our  devotion  to  God  to  make 
a  difference  to  him  even  greater  than  our  friendship  makes 
to  our  friends  ?  We  feel  a  natural  hesitation  in  answering 
in  the  affirmative.  It  is  characteristic  of  Religion  to 
shrink  from  such  an  assertion,  and  to  make  God  so  far 
the  predominant  partner  in  our  intercourse  with  him, 
that  even  our  knowledge  of  him  is  ascribed  to  his  own 
activity  in  us.  He  reveals  himself  to  us  and  in  us  ;  only 
so  far  as  he  does  so  can  we  be  said  to  find  him  either 
in  the  world  or  in  our  hearts.  The  initiation,  the 
37  Fitzgerald,  Rubdiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam,  §  67  (3rd  ed.). 


208  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

action,  and  the  success  are  all  to  be  referred  to  him.  He 
"  worketh  in  us  both  to  will  and  to  do."  38 

Nevertheless,  if  we  are  to  do  justice  to  all  sides  of  our 
religious  experience,  it  is  certain  that  there  is  present 
in  it  also  an  element  which  seems  to  meet  the  expecta- 
tions which  our  analogy  with  other  levels  of  experience 
had  led  us  to  form. 

There  is  the  consciousness  of  an  insistent  demand  upon 
us  for  our  worship.  It  is  easy  to  see  in  this  no  more  than 
a  survival  from  a  primiti^fe  theology  which  envisaged 
its  God  as  a  despotic  chieftain,  greedy  of  his  subjects' 
abject^ submission.  And  of  course  such  a  conception  of 
God  may  have  left  traces  in  our  religious  phraseology  ; 
though  even  this  conception  was  not,  when  it  was  alive, 
the  base  thing  that  it  seems  when  opposed  in  rivalry  to 
the  nobler  thought  inspired  by  a  later  teaching.  But 
probably  only  those  with  little  religious  experience  of 
their  own  will  be  content  to  dismiss  it  thus.  We  shall 
do  more  wisely  to  recognize  the  splendid  flower  sprung 
from  that  apparently  unlovely  seed  in  the  passionate 
experience  which  has  found  immortal  utterance  in  the 
greatest  religious  poem  of  our  own  age  and  country — 
the  poem  in  which  Francis  Thompson  has  told  us  of  his 
soul's  unavailing  flight  from  her  "  tremendous  Lover," 
the  Hound  of  Heaven. 

In  such  an  experience  the  consciousness  of  an  imperious 
summons  of  the  worshipper  to  a  complete  surrender  of 
himself  is  fused  with  the  consciousness  of  an  "  unchanging 
love  "  which  can  say,  "  Can  a  woman  forget  her  sucking 
child  that  she  should  not  have  compassion  upon  the  son 
of  her  womb  ?  Yea,  these  may  forget,  yet  will  I  not 
forget  thee."  39  It  cannot  be  denied,  then,  that  there 
38  Philipp,  ii.   13.        39  Isa.  xlix.  15  ;  Cowper's  18th  Olney  Hymn. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SIN  209 

is  a  phase  of  religious  experience  in  which  the  devotee 
is  conscious  of  his  devotion  as  '  making  a  difference  '  to 
God. 

But  how,  then,  can  God  be  regarded  as  perfect  from  all 
eternity  if  he  can  also  be  represented  as  needing  and 
desiring  our  worship  and  our  love  ?  Are  we  not  here  in 
the  presence  of  an  inevitable  contradiction,  such  as  must 
compel  us,  with  Mr.  Bradley,  to  regard  God,  the  object 
of  religious  worship,  as  appearance  only,  and  not  as  the 
ultimate  Reality,  wherein  all  contradictions  must  of 
necessity  be  harmonized  ? 

Now,  as  I  have  already  said,  there  may  be  a  sense  in 
which  Religion  need  have  no  fear  of  this  view.  As  Mr. 
Bradley  is  himself  fully  aware,  we  have  not  to  learn  for 
the  first  time  from  the  philosophical  critics  of  to-day 
that  God's  ways  are  not  as  our  ways  nor  his  thoughts 
as  our  thoughts, 40  or  even  that  the  distance  between 
them  is  so  great  that  God's  cannot  properly  be  called 
'  ways  '  or  '  thoughts.'  41  Nor  is  there  any  novelty  in  the 
doctrine  that  the  Word,  or  (as  we  may  in  this  context 
quite  legitimately  translate,  using  Mr.  Bradley's  expression) 
the  Appearance,  was  in  the  beginning  with  God,  and  was 
God.42  The  only  thing,  as  I  venture  to  think,  that  Reli- 
gion is  here  interested  in  repudiating,  is  an  attempt  to 
undo  the  work  of  those  Christian  theologians  of  the  age 
of  creed-making  who  fixed  their  own  community  in  the 
faith  that  the  Appearance  and  that  of  which  it  is  the 
Appearance  are  one  undivided  God,  the  only  lawful 
Object  of  worship,  because  the  only  one  which  will  not 
fail  the  worshipper  when  he  endeavours  to  give  a  reason 
able  account  of  the  faith  that  is  in  him.     It  is  only  in 

4°  Isa.  Iv.  8.  41  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  436*;^ 

4»  John  i.    I. 


210  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

so  far  as  Mr.  Bradley's  distinction  of  God  from  the  Absolute 
may  be  thought  to  "  divide  the  Substance  "43  of  which 
these  theologians  affirmed  the  indivisible  unity  that  it 
endangers  Religion.  And  I  should  not  speak  thus  if 
I  considered  that  the  danger  was  a  danger  merely  to  the 
religion  of  one  particular  religious  community — although 
that  community  were  the  one  of  which  I  myself  am  a 
member — if  I  did  not  hold  that  the  community  whose 
explicit  formula  of  faith  is  here  directly  threatened  were 
in  this  respect  the  defender  of  a  fundamental  interest 
of  Religion,  the  nature  of  which  has  been  less  fully  realized 
by  other  communities  than  by  the  Christian  Church. 

The  difficulty  which  we  find  in  reconciling  the  divine 
perfection  with  the  divine  demand  upon  us  (both  of  which 
are  in  my  judgment  what  Mr.  Bradley  would  call  '  ideas 
necessary  to  the  religious  consciousness,'  and  therefore, 
in  his  view  true,  although  not  ultimately  true) — a  diffi- 
culty which  we,  as  finite  spirits,  cannot,  I  think,  so  com- 
pletely overcome  as  to  possess  its  answer  in  an  experienced 
fact — is  an  indication  that  we  are  here  in  the  presence 
of  a  problem  beyond  our  powers  to  solve,  and  therefore 
of  one  not  less  legitimately  entitled  to  be  described  as  a 
'  mystery  '  than  that  of  the  detail  of  the  future,  to  which, 
as  we  saw,  Signor  Croce  would  allow  the  name. 

But  it  is,  I  think,  relevant  to  the  main  purpose  of  these 
Lectures  to  point  out  that  it  is  precisely  in  the  instance 
of  personal  character  that  we  come  nearest  to  understand- 
ing how  perfection  might  not  exclude  the  desire  of  self- 
communication  ;  since  in  this  instance  the  notion  of  a 
self-sufficient  perfection  strikes  us  as  displeasing,  and 
as  really  contradictory  of  our  notion  of  what  would  be 
perfect  in  that  kind.  And,  as  Plato  says,44  speaking  of 
43  See  the  Quicumque   vult.  44  Tim.  28  c,  29  E. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  SIN  211 

"  the  Father  and  Maker  of  the  universe,"  in  words  which 
were  adopted  by  Athanasius  45  as  an  axiom  of  his  theology  : 
"  He  was  good,  and  therefore  he  grudged  existence  to 
nothing."  What  I  have  called  (using  the  word  '  myth  ' 
in  its  high  Platonic  sense)  the  myth  of  a  Mediator  has 
been  turned  to  account  to  express  the  problem  before  us. 
For  here  the  necessity  of  self-communication  to  a  perfect 
being  is  expressed  in  the  representation  of  the  eternal 
Sonship  as  an  intrinsic  factor  in  the  Godhead  ;  and  the 
part  of  finite  and  imperfect  beings  in  this  self-communica- 
tion is  expressed  in  the  thought  of  their  archetypes  or 
patterns  as  included  within  the  eternal  nature  of  the 
divine  Son  or  Word.  And  here  again  we  must  note 
that  in  the  instance  of  personal  character  we  seem  to  find 
no  incompatibility  between  the  thought  of  a  perfection 
on  which  we  can  place  entire  dependence  and  that  of  a 
living  activity,  whose  course  could  by  no  means  be 
settled  beforehand,  but  would  afford  to  the  spectator 
the  joy  of  anticipating  ever  new  and  unexpected  mani- 
festations of  power  and  wisdom  and  goodness.  We  may 
here  find  confirmation  for  the  view  that  the  religious 
consciousness  to  which  intercourse  with  the  supreme 
Reality  has  the  intimacy  and  passion  of  personal  converse 
is  that  which  takes  us  farthest  into  the  heart  of  that 
Reality  and  gives  most  assurance  of  the  solution  of  prob- 
lems which  yet  to  us  remain  mysteries  indeed,  but 
'  joyful  mysteries,'  mysteries  of  love,  which  may  be  said 
not  so  much  to  baffle  Reason  as  to  enlarge  its  scope  and 
opportunity. 

In  the  two  remaining  Lectures  of  this  course  I  must 
essay,   however   tentatively  and   modestly,   the   difficult 
task  of  gathering  together  the  suggestions  which  may 
45  de  Incarnatione  Verbi,  iii.  §  3 


212  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

be  obtained  from  the  historical  and  critical  discussions 
which  have  in  the  main  occupied  us  so  far,  into  something 
which  may  pass  for  a  constructive  account  of  the  place 
to  be  assigned  to  Personality  in  our  conception  of  the 
Supreme  Being,  whom  we  apprehend  in  Religion  as  God  ; 
bearing  in  mind  that,  in  the  memorable  words  of  Lord 
Gifford's  will,  "  the  true  and  felt  knowledge — not  mere 
nominal  knowledge — of  the  relations  of  man  and  of  the 
universe  to  him  is  the  means  of  man's  highest  well-being 
and  the  security  of  his  upward  progress." 


LECTURE   IX 

RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY 

The  preceding  Lectures  will  have,  I  think,  brought  out 
the  fact  that  the  problem  of  Personality  in  God  is  the 
same  as  that  which  is  expressed  in  asking  "  Is  God  the 
Absolute  ?  "  or  again  :  "  What  is  the  relation  of  Philosophy 
to  Religion  ?  "  It  may  at  first  sight  seem  as  though  the 
undeniable  existence  of  religions  and  even  of  great  religious 
systems  which  do  not  ascribe  Personality  to  God  were  a 
sufficient  argument  against  this  identification.  It  may 
be  remembered  that  in  the  historical  portion  of  this 
course  I  was  so  far  from  disputing  the  existence  of  Religion 
apart  from  a  doctrine  of  Divine  Personality  that  I  dwelt 
upon  the  evidence  that  such  a  doctrine  it  was  not  easy 
to  find  expUcitly  held  outside  of  Christianity,  and  that 
the  expression  "  Personality  of  God  "  as  distinguished 
from  "  personaUty  in  God  "  will  be  sought  in  vain  in  the 
authorized  formularies  (or  at  least  in  those  of  not  quite 
recent  origin)  accepted  by  any  of  that  large  majority  of 
Christian  Churches  and  sects  which  has  adhered  to  the 
main  Christian  tradition  by  retaining  the  doctrine  of  a 
Trinity  of  Persons  in  the  Unity  of  the  Godhead.  ^  Never- 
theless I  think  it  will  be  found  that  it  is  just  in  proportion 
as  we  interpret  our  relation  to  God  as  a  personal  relation 
'  See  Lecture  III. 

21S 


214  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

— and  only  in  such  an  interpretation  can  I  find  a  sound 
basis  for  a  doctrine  of  Divine  Personality — that  our 
religious  experience  will  prevent  us  from  being  overborne 
by  what  we  may  call  the  dialectical  difficulties,  drawn 
from  considerations  which  abstract  from  the  specifically 
religious  consciousness,  that  beset  the  attribution  of 
personality  to  the  supreme  Reality.  It  is  the  fact  that 
Religion  is,  in  the  words  of  Lord  Gifford's  will,  a  felt 
knowledge  of  God,  calling  into  jDlay  emotions  unmis- 
takably akin  to  those  excited  towards  our  fellow-men 
in  intercourse  with  them — emotions  of  reverence  and  of 
love — which  differentiates  it  from  Philosophy,  and  gives 
meaning  to  the  remark  which  comes  naturally  to  our 
lips  in  reading  certain  passages  in  the  Metaphysics  of 
Aristotle  and  in  the  Ethics  of  Spinoza,  that  those  great 
men,  who  seem  beyond  most  others  of  the  famous  teachers 
of  our  race  to  move  in  a  region  of  thought  remote 
from  ordinary  religious  practices,  have  after  all  found  in 
their  philosophy  itself  what  is  unquestionably  a  religion. 

Perhaps  I  may  be  allowed  to  state  what  I  take  to  be 
the  truth  as  to  the  relation  of  Religion  to  Philosophy  in 
words  which  I  have  already  used  elsewhere  when  dealing 
with  the  same  subject. 

"  When  men  have  begun  to  put  to  themselves  questions 
of  the  kind  in  attempting  to  answer  which  Philosophy  con- 
sists, and  to  ask  what  is  the  true  nature  of  this  mysterious 
world  in  which  they  find  themselves,  how  it  comes  to  be 
there  and  what  is  at  the  back  of  it  all,  they  have  never 
approached  these  inquiries  with  a  mind  completely  free 
from  prepossessions.  In  a  far-distant  past  their  fathers  had 
begun  dimly  to  feel  the  presence  of  the  mystery  which  en- 
compassed them  on  every  side.  With  a  fearful  sense  of  its 
strangeness  to  them,  its  weirdness  and  uncanniness,  there 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  215 

was  mingled  an  anticipation  of  the  possibility  of  establishing 
a  familiarity  or  of  proving  a  kinship  with  it,  which  might 
be  the  hope  of  a  securer,  freer,  more  powerful  existence 
for  themselves  than  was  possible  under  other  conditions. 
During  a  long  course  of  ages  such  fear  of  the  mystery  and 
desire  of  coming  to  terms  with  it,  in  combination  with  the 
more  disinterested  emotions  of  awe  and  curiosity,  had 
everywhere  given  rise  to  some  complicated  system  of  for- 
bearances and  actions,  of  ceremonies  and  stories,  expressive 
of  the  habitual  attitude  of  a  people  towards  the  powers 
that  surround  them  and  whose  ways  are  not  as  theirs 
— in  a  word,  to  a  religion.  Thus  the  philosopher,  when 
he  begins  to  philosophize,  is  already  accustomed  to  a 
certain  way  of  approaching  the  riddle  which  he  desires 
to  solve,  by  which  he  cannot  fail  to  be  affected,  whether 
or  no  he  be  himself  inclined  to  take  it  for  a  clue  in  his  own 
investigations.  But  it  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of 
Philosophy  that  it  should  not  so  take  anything  for  granted 
as  to  refuse  to  test  and  examine  it  before  admitting  it  as 
true.  And  so  neither  the  initiators  of  a  new  philosophical 
movement  nor  an  individual  who  is  beginning  philosophi- 
cal studies  for  himself  can  avoid  in  the  first  instance 
taking  up  an  attitude  of  independence  towards  religious 
tradition,  which,  if  the  representatives  of  that  tradition 
do  not  tolerate  it,  may  easily  pass  into  hostility.  The 
opposition  between  Philosophy  and  Religion,  which  we 
so  frequently  observe,  is  thus  both  natural  and  inevitable. 
It  arises  from  the  fact  that  they  are  both  concerned  with 
the  same  object. 

"  It  does  not,  however,  follow  that  Philosophy  must 
eventually  take  the  place  of  Religion  as  a  better 
way  of  doing  what  Religion  has  tried  to  do  in  an 
inferior   manner.     This    might   be   so    if  the   theories  of 


216  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

the  origin  and  course  of  nature  which  often  form  part  of 
a  rehgious  tradition  constituted  the  whole  or  the  most 
important  part  of  ReUgion.^  But  this  is  not  so.  Rather 
it  would  seem  that  men  do  not  cease  to  find  in  the  universe 
that  which  evokes  and  "  in  divers  portions  and  divers 
manners  "  satisfies  their  instinct  of  reverence,  their 
impulse  to  worship.  This  experience  can  only  find  ex- 
pression in  some  sort  of  Religion.  But,  just  because 
Rehgion  is  a  response  to  what  is  felt  to  be  the  innermost 
heart  of  Reality  as  a  whole,  the  whole  nature  of  man 
necessarily  claims  to  take  part  in  it.  Hence  a  religion 
when  once  the  level  of  spiritual  development  is  reached 
at  which  Philosophy  can  come  into  existence,  can  no  more 
ignore  or  evade  the  criticism  of  Philosophy,  without 
abdicating  its  claim  to  express  the  response  of  the  whole 
man  to  the  Divine,  than  Philosophy  can  in  its  turn 
without  self-mutilation  ignore  the  testimony  of  religious 
experience  to  the  nature  of  that  ultimate  Reality  which 
it  seeks  to  apprehend  as  it  truly  is."  3 

Philosophy  is  from  the  first  and  throughout  a  search 
for  the  one  in  the  many,  which,  if  successful,  must  issue 
in  the  knowledge  of  a  single  ground  of  all  things,  or  of 
an  all-inclusive  unity — in  other  words,  of  '  the  Absolute  ' 
of  modern  philosophers.  Now  the  aspiration  after  such 
a  knowledge  has  its  original  and  constant  stimulus  in 
that  hope  and  promise  of  its  fulfilment  which  the  religious 
experience  supplies,4  so  that  I  think  it  would  not  be  too 
much  to  say,  not  only  that  Philosophy  could  not  have 

»  Thus  Croce,  who  thinks  that  Religion  is  doomed  to  vanish  in 
Philosophy,  states  expressly  that  "  Religion  is  nothing  but  know- 
ledge" (Estetica  I,  c.  8,  Eng.  tr.  p.  102). 

3  History  of  Philosophy  in  Home  University  Library,  pp. 
78-80. 

4  Group  Theories  of  Religion,  p.   189. 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  217 

arisen,  but  that  it  can  never  long  flourish,  except  in  the 
soil  of  Religion. 5 

An  industrious  school  of  thinkers  in  France  who  lay 
especial  claim  for  themselves  to  the  title  of  sociologists — 
I  regret  that  we  have  had  within  the  last  year  to  lament 
the  death  of  their  distinguished  leader,  M.  Emile  Durkheim 
— have  contended  that  such  elementary  and,  to  science, 
indispensable  notions  or  '  categories  '  as  those  of  Time, 
Space,  Number,  Causality,  have  their  origin  in  the  arrange- 
ments of  primitive  society,  arrangements  which  excite 
in  the  members  of  the  groups  to  which  they  belong  emotions 
of  the  kind  which  we  call  religious.  I  have  elsewhere 
attempted  to  deal  somewhat  fully  with  this  theory,  which 
has  been  presented  by  the  writers  of  whom  I  have  just 
spoken  in  a  form  which  appears  to  me  to  be  highly  mis- 
leading, and  in  connexion  with  a  general  view  which  I 
take  to  be  philosophically  unsound.  Nevertheless  in 
my  judgment  it  contains,  although  mixed  with  some 
error,  a  genuine  truth  of  high  importance. 

This  truth  may  be  stated  as  follows.  It  is  characteristic 
of  the  human  mind  to  concern  itself  with  the  All ;  it  is, 
indeed,  in  virtue  of  this  characteristic  that  it  can  properly 
be  called  rational.  But  in  thus  concerning  itself  with 
the  All  it  always  starts  with  its  immediate  social  environ- 
ment. The  measures  of  Time  and  Space  used  by  primitive 
man,  the  interest  taken  by  them  in  certain  numbers,  the 
ways  in  which  they  account  for  striking  events  in  their 
experience,  although,  since  they  presuppose  the  notions 
of  Time  and  Space,  Number  and  Causality,  they  cannot 
without  a  fallacy  be  described  as  the  source  of  these 
notions,  yet  are  certainly  determined  by  this  immediate 
social  environment.  Only  gradually  have  men  come  to 
5  Group  Theories  of  Religion,  p.  i88. 


218  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

realize  that  their  immediate  social  environment  is  not 
the  dominant  fact  in  the  universe.  Only  gradually  has 
their  consciousness  of  the  world,  which  at  first  was,  as 
we  may  put  it,  mediated  to  them  through  the  consciousness 
of  their  group,  become  the  consciousness  of  a  Reality 
which  cannot  be  identified  with  even  the  most  compre- 
hensive of  human  communities.  But,  as  ever  wider  and 
wider  horizons  have  opened  to  their  view,  the  religious 
emotion  which  was  from  the  first  excited  in  the  per- 
formance of  those  actions  whereby  men  shared  in  the 
common  life  of  their  tribe  has  continued  to  attend  the 
consciousness  of  the  all-embracing  Unity  wherein  they 
"  live  and  move  and  have  their  being."  ^  The  French 
sociologists  whom  I  mentioned  above  are  apt  to  speak  of 
the  object  of  their  religious  consciousness  as  though  it 
were  a  merely  subjective  fact,  the  product  of  man's  social 
nature.  But  it  would  in  my  judgment  be  better  to 
acknowledge  that  the  very  social  consciousness  wherein 
consciousness  of  the  supreme  Unity  has  from  the  first 
been  implicit  is  rooted  in  the  spiritual  nature  of  that 
supreme  Unity  itself,  which  in  the  movement  of  man's 
spiritual  and  social  life  has  been  carrying  on  that  per- 
petual revelation  and  communication  of  itself  which 
belongs   to   its   own   innermost   being. 

Although  it  would  no  doubt  be  idle  to  contend  that 
whatever  has  at  any  time  "  been  called  God  and  wor- 
shipped "  7  has  been  explicitly  conceived  as  a  single 
Ground  of  all  existence  or  as  an  all-inclusive  Unity,  the 
'  Absolute  '  of  modern  philosophers,  yet  I  am  persuaded 
that  no  God  that  is  explicitly  distinguished  from  the 
Absolute  can  prove  a  satisfying  object  to  the  religious 
consciousness  in  anj'  one  who  has  attained  to  the  level 
Acts  xvii.  28.  7  2  Thess.  ii.  4. 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  219 

of  intellectual  development  at  which  he  can  ask  himself 
the  question  what  is  behind  and  beyond  the  God  whom  he 
worships.  Anthropologists  have  been  puzzled  by  the 
'  high  gods  '  of  primitive  peoples,  who  are  but  little 
worshipped  themselves  but  are  thought  of  as  older  and 
more  venerable  than  deities  more  frequently  in  the  thoughts 
of  their  adorers.  I  suspect  that  these  '  high  gods,'  what- 
ever the  original  application  of  the  names  given  to  them 
(which  may  differ  widely  in  different  instances),  reflect 
an  early  and  embryonic  form  of  speculation  upon  that 
one  ultimate  Ground  of  all  existence  which  philosophers 
call  the  Absolute,  and  which,  as  soon  as  it  is  distinguished 
from  "  whatever  gods  there  be,"  ^  at  once  appropriates 
to  itself  the  attributes  of  genuine  and  primary  Godhead, 
reducing  all  other  objects  of  worship  to  a  comparatively 
lower  grade.  These  lower  gods  may  be  more  familiar, 
more  intimately  known,  more  practically  worth  pro- 
pitiating ;  but  they  are  as  Gods  inferior  to  the  Beings 
who  stand  for  the  ultimate  Reality  at  the  back  of  every- 
thing in  these  rudimentary  attempts  at  a  metaphysical 
system  for  the  Absolute.  Thus  something  less  than 
the  Absolute,  or  what  stands  for  the  Absolute  in  any 
particular  system,  may  be  and  often  is  "  called  God  and 
worshipped  "  and  may  even  be  far  more  considered  and 
worshipped,  and  that,  very  likely,  because  more  feared, 
than  that  which  does  stand  for  the  Absolute.  But  it  is 
to  that  which  stands  for  the  Absolute  that  in  the  end 
the  greatest  reverence  must  be  paid  ;  nor  can  the  religious 
consciousness  forbear  the  demand  that  the  supreme  God 
should  be  the  supreme  Reality,  the  Absolute  and  nothing 
less.  Over  against  this  statement,  however,  must  be  set 
another,  namely,  that  apart  from  the  religious  conscious- 
8  Swinburne,   The  Garden  of  Proserpine. 


220  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

ness  the  Absolute  cannot  be  known  as  God.  The  former 
statement  indicates  the  intimate  connexion,  the  latter 
the  distinction,  never  to  be  neglected,  between  Religion 
and   Philosophy. 

When  modern  philosophers  speak  of  the  Absolute  and 
ask  what  is  or  stands  for  the  Absolute  in  any  particular 
system  of  thought,  what  they  have  in  view  is  the  principle 
of  Unity  which  is  reached  at  last  by  that  search  for  a 
'  One  in  the  Many '  upon  which  every  philosophy  is  engaged. 
But  of  course  a  search  for  a  '  One  in  the  Many  '  may  not 
go  further  than  the  attainment  of  some  subordinate 
principle  which  claims  to  unify  not  the  whole  multitude 
of  appearances  which  make  up  the  world  of  our  experience 
but  only  some  restricted  group  of  them.  And  we  may, 
I  think,  learn  something  to  our  purpose  from  a  study  of 
some  subordinate  principles  of  unity,  and  of  the  light 
which  may  be  thrown  by  such  a  study  upon  the  nature 
of  that  more  comprehensive  principle  with  the  discovery 
of  which  we  could  be  satisfied  and  find  rest  from  our 
labours. 

A  principle  of  unity  in  multiplicity  which  early  attracted 
the  notice  of  philosophers  is  the  Universal.  We  may 
perhaps  profitably  ask  how  far  the  manner  in  which  the 
Universal  unifies  its  particulars  can  be  supposed  to  throw 
light  on  the  nature  of  the  supreme  principle  of  unity — 
the  Absolute. 

A  Universal,  taken  in  its  widest  sense,  is  an  identical 
nature  manifested  in  many  instances  each  of  which  is, 
as  an  instance  of  it,  entitled  to  the  common  name.  For 
example,  the  common  name  '  horse  '  is  used  with  an  equal 
right  of  every  animal  which  exhibits  a  certain  nature 
which  we  may  call  '  horse-ness.' 

Now  it  is  clear  that  we  cannot  regard  the  Absolute 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  221 

as  a  '  universal  '  in  the  sense  that  it  is  an  identical  nature 
exhibited  by  many  instances,  each  of  which  may  bear 
the  common  name  and  be  called  an  Absolute.  To  speak 
of  many  Absolutes  would  be  self-contradictory.  When 
Mr.  Bosanquet  9  insists  that  the  Absolute  is  individual — 
is,  indeed,  according  to  him  the  only  genuine  individual 
— he  is  calling  attention  to  that  feature  in  any  notion  that 
we  can  form  of  the  Supreme  Unity  which  differentiates 
it  from  a  logical  '  universal.'  On  the  other  hand,  the 
expression  '  universal '  is  sometimes  used  (often,  as  I 
venture  to  think,  without  sufficient  care  being  taken  to 
indicate  that  we  have  here  passed  beyond  the  limits  of 
the  meaning  given  to  it  above)  for  a  '  systematic  whole.' 
It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  how  this  use  is  connected 
with  the  former.  The  identical  nature  may  appear 
in  each  of  its  instances  with  a  definite  modification  ;  a 
genus  is  a  '  universal '  of  this  kind,  and  the  species  are 
its  '  particulars.'  Where  these  species  can  be  arranged 
in  a  serial  order  and  exhaust  between  them  all  the  possible 
alternatives  of  which  the  identical  nature  common  to 
them  all  is  capable,  there  we  may  be  said  to  have  a  sys- 
tematic whole  which  determines  the  mutual  distinctions 
and  relations  of  all  its  parts.  It  is  among  the  abstract 
objects  of  mathematical  science  that  one  can  most  readily 
find  illustrations  of  an  exhaustive  series  of  alternative 
species  whose  differences  are  determined  by  nothing  but 
the  generic  nature  itself.  It  is  thus  that  numbers  must 
be  either  odd  or  even,  lines  either  straight  or  curved, 
triangles  equilateral,  isosceles,  or  scalene,  and  so  forth. 
But  of  course  for  the  construction  of  an  ideal  of  a  sys- 
tematic whole  we  should  be  far  from  finding  an  adequate 
pattern  in  this  region  of  mere  abstractions.  We  should 
9  See  above,  Lecture  I,  pp.  i8  f. 


222  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

gain  more  from  reflection  on  the  nature  of  a  complex 
work  of  art,  or  of  a  rich  and  many-sided  character.  Such 
wholes  as  these  are  (what  '  number  '  and  the  like  are  not) 
eminently  individual ;  and  the  supreme  Unity  must 
certainly  be  conceived  as  possessing  in  the  highest  degree 
the  attribute  of  individuality. 

We  may  now  turn  to  another  principle  of  unity,  that  of 
Substance  :  and  in  this  case  the  attempt  to  construe  the 
Absolute  in  terms  of  it  has  been  made,  as  is  well  known, 
by  one  of  the  world's  greatest  thinkers.  But  the  few 
observations  which  I  shall  submit  to  you  will  make  no 
sort  of  pretension  to  be  a  general  criticism  of  the  philosophy 
of  Spinoza.  It  would  be  rash  to  take  for  granted  that 
by  pointing  out  the  inadequacy  of  the  common  account 
of  Substance  as  a  description  of  the  nature  of  the  Absolute 
one  must  be  disposing  of  any  system  in  the  terminology 
of  which  the  word  '  Substance  '  happens  to  play  an  im- 
portant part.  Words  are,  indeed,  less  amenable  to  dicta- 
tion in  respect  of  their  meanings  than  Lewis  Carroll's 
'  Humpty-Dumpty '  10  supposed:  but  as  "customs,"  ac- 
cording to  Shakespeare,"  "  curtsey  to  great  kings,"  so 
do  the  usages  of  language  to  great  philosophers. 

The  ancient  contrast  of  Substance  and  Accident  will 
not,  I  think,  help  us  in  the  present  inquiry.  It  belongs 
to  the  Aristotelian  philosophy,  in  which  substances  coexist 
with  other  substances  as  real  as  themselves.  But  the 
Absolute  cannot  thus  coexist  with  other  Absolutes.  Hence 
we  find  the  Schoolmen  maintaining  that  in  God  there 
are  no  Accidents  ;  and  when  Spinoza  confines  the  term 
'  Substance  '  to  the  Absolute,  we  find  that  its  correlate 
in  his  system  is  not  Accident  but  Attribute.    It  is  possible 

10  Alice  Through  the  Looking  Glass,  c.  6. 
"  Henry  V,  Act  V,  Sc.  2. 


RELIGION   AND    PHILOSOPHY  223 

to  speculate  on  the  possibility  of  a  Substance  existing 
without  Accidents  ;  but  a  Substance  is  nothing  apart 
from  its  Attributes,  nor  Attributes  apart  from  the  Sub- 
stance to  which  they  belong ;  thus  only  bodies  can 
gravitate,  and  gravity  can  only  belong  to  bodies.  It  may 
seem  that  an  ultimate  principle  of  unity,  such  as  we  seek 
under  the  name  of  the  Absolute,  would  not  be  what  we 
are  looking  for,  if  it  were  not  a  unity  of  this  type — if  the 
detail  of  the  Universe  were  not  in  the  last  resort  such  as 
could  only  belong  to  this  Universe  or  (to  express  the  same 
thing  in  other  words)  if  the  Universe  might  have  equally 
well  been  differently  constituted.  But  here  serious  diffi- 
culties seem  to  threaten  us.  Can  we,  and  especially  can 
our  religious  consciousness,  acquiesce  in  what  would 
appear  to  be  a  system  of  rigid  determination  throughout, 
wherein  nothing  can  be  otherwise  than  it  is  and  whatever 
is  is  at  once  the  best  and  the  worst  because  the  only  thing 
possible  ?  It  is  just  because  of  these  difficulties  that  so 
many  have  found  themselves  unable  to  subscribe  to  that 
famous  doctrine  of  the  Absolute  Substance  to  which  I 
have  already  referred,  and  that  the  rehgious  world  in 
particular,  both  in  Spinoza's  own  day  and  long  after, 
could  see  in  him,  though  he  wrote  as  one  to  whom  God 
was   all  in   all,   the   very  prince  of   atheists. 

The  inadequacy  of  the  notion  of  Substance  as  a  guide 
to  the  nature  of  the  Absolute  is  seen  most  obviously  in 
this,  that  it  is  no  less  apphcable  to  the  inanimate  or 
material  than  to  Life  and  Spirit.  Since,  however,  the 
Absolute  manifests  itself  in  Life  and  Spirit  as  well  as  in 
lifeless  Matter,  a  notion  which  abstracts  from  the  differ- 
ence between  these  two  spheres  of  being  cannot  be  the 
adequate  ground  and  principle  of  both  and  also  of  the 
distinction    between    them.     And    that    universal    deter- 


224  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

minism  which  strikes  so  terrible  a  chill  to  the  heart  does 
so  because  what  it  at  once  suggests  to  the  mind  is  not 
a  spiritual  activity,  such  as  we  know  in  our  own  thought 
and  will,  but  rather  some  kind  of  blind  mechanical  process, 
the  discovery  of  the  universality  of  which  would  make 
our  thought  and  will  themselves  a  mockery  and  an  illusion. 

Can  we,  then,  find  in  Life  the  clue  we  desire  ?  Life  too 
is  a  principle  of  unity  with  an  infinite  variety  of  mani- 
festations. In  our  own  day  the  imaginative  genius  and 
persuasive  eloquence  of  M.  Bergson  have  been  lavished 
on  a  brilliant  presentation  of  Life  in  the  character  of  the 
Absolute. 

In  this  philosophy  of '  creative  evolution '  we  are  offered, 
in  place  of  the  determinism  associated  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Absolute  as  Substance,  a  theory  which,  denying 
that  the  road  yet  to  be  traversed  by  Life  is  determined 
beforehand  either  after  the  manner  of  the  regular  working 
of  a  machine  or  after  that  of  a  plan  directed  to  a  pre- 
destined end,  leaves,  in  M.  Bergson 's  striking  phrase, 
"  the  gates  of  the  future  open  "  "  ;  a  theory  which 
has  seemed  to  many  to  be  an  inspiring  call  to  adventure 
and  a  message  of  hope.  Yet  after  all  perhaps  it  is  only 
to  cheerful  and  sanguine  temperaments  that  we  can  fairly 
expect  it  to  be  a  message  of  hope  ;  for  to  persons  of  a 
timid  and  apprehensive  disposition  the  thought  of  those 
open  gates  might  become  rather  a  source  of  fear  and 
trembling  in  the  presence  of  a  boundless  uncertainty. 

I  am  convinced  that  we  should  do  better  to  follow  M. 
Bergson  in  representing  to  ourselves  the  Absolute  as  a 
universal  Life  than  to  think  of  it  as  a  lifeless  Mechanism 

"  Devant  I' Evolution  de  la  vie  .  .  .  les  partes  de  I'avenir  restent 
grandes  ouvertes  {UEvolution  creatvice,  p.  114).  Cp.  Bosanquet, 
Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  Lecture  X. 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  225 

And,  before  indicating  what  notwithstanding  seems  to 
me  wanting  even  in  this  representation  of  it  as  Life,  I 
will  dwell  briefly  on  some  especial  advantages  which  it 
may  be  held  to  possess,  not  only  over  any  attempt  to 
conceive  the  Absolute  after  the  analogy  of  a  lifeless 
mechanism,  but  even  over  views  which  seek  for  a  clue 
to  its  nature  rather  in  Thought  or  Will  than  in  mere  Life. 

These  advantages  consist  mainly  in  this,  that  animated 
nature,  when  studied  apart  from  any  metaphysical  or 
theological  presuppositions,  appears  to  present  the  spectacle 
of  a  constant  effort  after  adaptation  to  environment, 
not  such  as  to  indicate  some  determinate  end  in  view  to 
which  we  could  give  a  name  and  could  fancy  it  as  established 
beforehand  by  some  external  designer,  but  rather  such 
as  to  suggest  in  the  case  of  each  species  of  organism  an 
instinctive  desire  to  preserve  and  perpetuate  itself,  without 
any  regard  to  the  interest  of  other  species  ;  and  also 
what  we  can  hardly  describe  otherwise  than  as  a  wonderful 
ingenuity  displayed  in  the  gratification  of  this  desire, 
although  at  the  same  time  an  ingenuity  divorced  from 
any  appearance  of  those  processes  of  discursive  reasoning 
and  calculation  which  we  associate  with  ingenuity  in  the 
case  of  human  beings. 

Now  it  has  always  been  the  grand  obstacle  to  the 
adoption  either  of  a  theistic  theory  of  the  universe,  or 
even  of  a  pantheistic  theory  which  would  emphasize  the 
unity  and  goodness  of  the  immanent  Spirit,  the  Soul 
of  the  '  one  stupendous  whole  '  (to  quote  the  poet  Pope's 
classical  expression  of  this  kind  of  view), ^3  that  the 
world  of  Uving  beings  is  revealed  to  our  most  careful 
inspection  as  the  theatre  of  a  vast  conflict,  '  a  struggle 
for  existence,'  wherein  pain  and  self-seeking  (the  typical 
13  Essay  on  Man,  Ep.  i.  9. 


226  GOD    AND   PERSONALITY 

instances  of  physical  and  moral  evil  respectively)  are 
indispensable  conditions  of  the  result  achieved,  and  in 
which  there  occur  not  only  success  and  victory,  but  also 
failure  and  defeat.  Can  we  not,  it  may  plausibly  be  asked, 
avoid  these  difficulties  by  frankly  admitting  that  in  con- 
templating Life,  the  impulse  manifested  in  this  great 
movement  with  its  general  upward  tendency  attested  by 
the  actual  evolution  of  reason  and  civilization,  science 
and  morality,  but  also  with  its  patent  indifference  to  the 
standards  by  which  we  judge  of  individual  human  conduct 
we  are  face  to  face  with  the  general  character  of  the  ulti- 
mate Reality  ?  And  we  must  not  overlook,  in  estimating 
the  attraction  of  such  an  admission,  the  appeal  which 
it  is  found  to  make  to  the  poetical  or  artistic  temperament. 
The  possessor  of  such  a  temperament  is  quick  to  see  interest 
and  beauty  in  situations  from  which  the  moralist  turns 
away  with  disgust  and  condemnation,  and  is  accustomed 
to  rely  rather  upon  intuition  than  upon  reasoning.  It  is 
here  interesting  to  note,  though  I  do  not  propose  to  examine 
the  affiliation  by  M.  Bergson  of  artistic  intuition  to 
the  '  instinct  '  which  is  most  strikingly  exhibited  in  bees 
and  ants  rather  than  to  the  '  intellect  '  characteristic 
of  human  beings  alone  among  the  living  inhabitants  of 
this  planet. 

To  one  more  point  in  favour  of  this  representation  of 
the  Absolute  after  the  fashion  of  an  all-pervading  Life 
I  must  call  your  attention.  It  undoubtedly  is  capable 
of  rneeting,  to  a  certain  extent  at  least,  the  demands  of 
the  religious  consciousness. 

'  Half  a  beast  is  the  great  god  Pan  '  m  ;  yet  he  is  a 
great  god  too.  The  felt  presence  of  that  mysterious  Power 
has  at  all  times  availed  to  call  forth  from  the  hearts  of 

M  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,  A  Musical  Instrument. 


RELIGION    AND    PHILOSOPHY  227 

men  the  sentiment  of  solemn  awe,  in  intimate  fusion, 
however,  with  the  sensuous  excitement  proper  to  the 
mood  of  abandonment  to  impulses  which  are  the  very 
vehicles  and  instruments  of  Nature's  divine  fecundity,  ^s 
Nay,  to  tell  the  truth,  religious  emotion  is  perhaps  more 
easily  to  be  found  in  such  worship  as  this  than  in  one 
paid  to  a  God  conceived  mainly  as  a  Supreme  Reason  and 
Goodness  ;  although  no  doubt  at  what  we  are  accustomed 
to  call  higher  levels  of  religious  experience  there  is  found 
in  exceptional  cases  a  mysticism  like  that  of  the  "  un- 
daunted daughter  of  desire,"  ^^  which,  although  dis- 
associated from  the  satisfaction  of  animal  instincts,  is 
for  all  its  "  large  draughts  of  intellectual  day  "  at  least 
no  less  passionate  than  any  that  the  most  orgiastic  rites 
of  nature-worship  could  show. 

In  passing  from  the  description  of  this  mode  of  con- 
ceiving the  Absolute  to  the  criticism  of  it,  I  would 
emphasize  the  point  that  it  is  not  the  positive  side  of  it, 
the  importance  attached  to  Life  as  a  manifestation  of  the 
ultimate  Reality,  but  the  negative  side  of  it,  the  deprecia- 
tion in  comparison  of  Reason  and  Goodness,  which  seems 
to  me  open  to  objection.  The  Reason  and  Goodness  for 
which  a  claim  can  be  made  with  any  hope  of  success 
to  be  regarded  as  characteristic  of  the  Supreme  Being 
will  certainly  be  a  living  Reason  and  an  active  Goodness, 
no  mere  stereotyped  formula  or  rule  for  thought  or  action 
such  as  is  (it  would  appear)  suggested  to  some  minds  by 
the  mention  of  these  words. 

I  will  do  no  more  than  mention  in  passing  that  those 

«5  I  borrow  the  expression  from  the  title  of  an  essay  by  the  late 
George  Tyrrell,  read  to  the  Philosophical  Society  at  Oxford  very 
shortly  before  his  lamented  death ;  see  Essays  on  Faith  and  Immor- 
tality, pt.  2,  c.  14 

«6  Crashaw,  The  Flaming  Heart  (of  St.  Teresa). 


228  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

who  conceive  the  Absolute  on  the  analogy  of  Life,  no 
less  than  those  who  conceive  it  as  Mind  or  Spirit,  may  be 
challenged  to  give  an  account  consistent  with  their  view 
of  what  we  call  the  material  world,  which  is  not  alive, 
and  yet  is  commonly  regarded  as  indisputably  real. 
Attempts  to  explain  material  things  as  no  more  than 
'  ideas,'  in  the  sense  of  modifications  of  the  spirit  or  soul 
that  '  perceives  '  or  '  conceives  '  them,  will  be  uncon- 
genial to  thinkers  to  whom  part  of  the  attraction  of  the 
notion  of  Life  as  that  which  will  bring  us  nearest  to  the 
nature  of  the  ultimate  Reality  is  certainly  its  compre- 
hension of  subconscious  and  unconscious  processes  along 
with  such  as  rise,  in  the  phrase  now  so  familiar,  '  above 
the  threshold  of  consciousness.' 

M.  Bergson,  whom  I  have  already  taken  as  the  chief 
representative  at  present  of  the  mode  of  thought  which 
I  am  now  considering,  sees  in  inert  matter  only  the  living 
movement  around  us  observed  from  the  point  of  view  of 
one  particular  living  and  moving  individual,  or  perhaps 
it  would  be  more  strictly  in  accordance  with  the  spirit 
of  M.  Bergson's  philosophy  to  say,  an  individual  life  and 
movement ;  for  there  is  for  this  philosophy  no  individual 
substance  of  which  movement  and  life  are  states  alterna- 
tive to  rest  and  death.  Just  as  from  a  train  in  motion 
another  train  moving  alongside  at  an  equal  speed  appears 
to  be  standing  still,  so  to  us  as  individuals  the  movement 
of  life  around  us  presents  the  appearance  of  motionlessness 
and  gives  rise  to  the  notion  of  an  inert  matter  existing, 
where  in  fact  there  is  a  life  going  on  no  less  real  than  that 
of  which  we  are  aware  in  ourselves.  ^7  I  will  candidly 
confess  that  this  account  of  Matter  has  never  struck  me 

w  See  L'ivol.  criatr.  p.  273.  I  follow  the  interpretation  of 
Dr.  Wildon  Carr,  Henri  Bergson,  p.  30. 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  229 

as  illuminating  ;  but  rather  as  an  example  of  a  certain 
tendency,  characteristic  of  M.  Bergson,  to  disappoint 
his  readers  by  offering  a  vivid  picture  of  a  familiar  object 
as  the  explanation  of  something  else  of  a  quite  different 
nature  which  we  find  it  difficult  to  understand.  I  think 
that  this  objection  to  M.  Bergson's  account  of  Matter 
would  hold  even  if  one  were  able  to  admit  more  fully 
than  I  could  admit  the  principle  of  his  philosophy  to 
which  it  is  accommodated,  namely  that  there  are  in 
very  truth  no  moving  things  but  only  movement  itself, 
not,  strictly  speaking,  even  many  distinct  movements; 
but  only  one  continuous  indivisible  movement,  which 
needs  no  substance  in  which  to  inhere  and  is  itself  the  only 
Reality,  itself  at  once  the  World  and  Life  and  Time. 

It  is  not,  indeed,  necessary  that  all  partisans  of  the 
claim  of  Life  to  be  our  sufficient  clue  to  the  nature  of  the 
Absolute  should  adopt  this  particular  theory  of  Matter 
which  we  find  in  M,  Bergson.  But  it  is,  as  I  have  said, 
worth  noting  that  they  will  in  any  case  be  in  no  better 
position  in  this  respect  than  the  defenders  of  other  views 
which  are  not  naturalistic.  The  fact  that  Life  may  seem 
to  be,  so  to  speak,  more  deeply  immersed  in  matter  than 
Spirit  does  not  enable  us  any  the  more  to  explain  Matter 
out  of  that  which  we  contrast  with  it,  whether  that  be 
Spirit  or  whether  it  be  Life.  In  either  case  Matter  is 
within  our  experience,  the  medium  of  its  manifestation, 
the  instrument  of  its  communication,  the  treasury  of  its 
past  gains.  We  may  not  unreasonably  suppose  that  it 
exists  for  its  sake  and  in  order  to  its  service.  But  this  is 
no  less  reasonably  to  be  supposed  in  the  case  of  Spirit 
than  of  Life,  no  more  capable  of  demonstration  in  the 
case  of  Life  than  of  Spirit.  The  assertion  must  in  both 
cases  rest  upon  a  judgment  of  value  which  declares  the 


230  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

subordination  in  some  such  fashion  as  has  been  suggested 
of  Matter  to  Spirit  or  Life,  as  the  case  may  be,  to  be 
preferable  to  that  of  Spirit  or  Life  to  Matter  as  a  mere 
by-product  of  the  latter.  For,  as  the  history  of  the 
Cartesian  philosophy  proved  long  ago,  a  theory  which 
makes  them  quite  independent  of  each  other  will  never 
be  found  tenable  in  view  of  their  intimate  mutual  relations, 
especially  in  the  case  nearest  and  most  interesting  to 
ourselves,  that  of  the  union  of  body  and  soul  in  human 
beings.  I  am  in  no  way  inclined  to  dispute  the  judgment 
of  value  in  question  ;  but  it  is  quite  as  necessary  to  the 
position  of  the  thinker  who  envisages  the  Absolute  as 
Life  as  it   is  to  him   who   envisages  it   as  Spirit. 

Nor  can  I  feel  satisfied  that  there  is  not  in  the  tendency 
to  emphasize  Life  rather  than  Spirit  or  Reason  or  Goodness 
as  the  highest  category  under  which  we  can  consider 
Reality  a  risk  of  taking  refuge  from  certain  difficulties 
which  beset  the  adoption  of  these  rival  claimants  in 
what  is  after  all  an  evasion  rather  than  a  solution  of  the 
problems  raised.  That  Spirit  is  more  than  Life  and  that 
in  Spirit  we  have  made  explicit  what  in  Life  was  only 
implicit  it  would  be  hard  for  any  one  to  deny  who  was 
influenced  in  his  preference  for  Life  as  the  most  important 
characteristic  of  ReaHty  by  such  notions  as  have  been 
desciibed  above.  But  if  so,  must  it  not  be  in  Spirit  rather 
than  in  Life  that  we  shall  find  the  secret  even  of  the  latter  ? 
Again,  while  it  has  seemed  sometimes  as  though  Life 
would  afford  a  satisfactory  mean  between  mere  Mechanism, 
which  seems  plainly  inadequate  to  our  purpose,  and  Reason 
or  Intelligence,  to  which  the  facts  of  experience  seem  to 
be  inadequate,  are  we  sure  that  this  is  not  only  because 
we  have  not  made  up  our  minds  as  to  whether  Life  is  in 
truth   Mechanism   or   Intelligence   and   willingly   leave   it 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  231 

to  be  taken  for  either  or  both  and  so  avoid  the  responsi- 
bility of  decision  ?  For  my  part  I  suspect  that  the  words 
used  in  a  remarkable  article  on  Mechanism,  Intelligence, 
and  Life  contributed  some  time  ago  to  the  Hibbert  Journal  ^8 
may  contain  the  truth  on  this  subject.  "  It  will,  I  think, 
appear,"  says  Mr.  Joseph  in  this  article,  "  that  the  real 
antithesis  to  Mechanism  is  Intelligence,  and  that  Vitalism 
assumes  in  living  things  activity  such  as  nothing  known 
to  us  except  Intelligence  can  show." 

Lastly,  if  we  study  the  language  used  of  Life  by  its 
devotees,  we  shall,  unless  I  am  much  mistaken,  discover 
a  singular  oscillation  in  this  view  of  it  as  respects  its 
relation  to  Goodness.  On  the  one  hand  they  seem  to 
regard  it  as  a  point  in  its  favour  that  it  is,  so  to  say,  indif- 
ferent to  our  values,  whether  ethical  or  economic  (to  use 
a  distinction  brought  into  use  by  Signor  Croce).  On  the 
other  hand,  they  sometimes  appear  to  find  in  this  very 
indifference  something  of  greater  worth,  and  more  apt  to 
stir  us  to  awe  and  reverence — something,  in  fact,  in  the 
widest  sense  better,  at  the  heart  of  things,  than  would  be  a 
puritanically  rigorous  Moral  Law  or  a  Providence  solici- 
tous of  our  private  comfort.  We  are  thus  led  to  wonder 
whether  we  can  really  get  away,  under  cover  of  accepting 
Life  for  the  Supreme  Reality,  from  that  search  for  Reason 
and  Goodness  as  the  ultimate  moving  principle  of  the 
Universe  in  which  the  classical  tradition  of  philosophy 
from  Plato  and  Aristotle  downwards  has  found  the  true 
business  of  the  would-be  '  spectator  of  all  time  and  all 
existence.'  '^9 

Yet  perhaps  the  attempt  to  set  up  Life  as  the  true  type 
of  Absolute  Reality  may  serve  a  useful  purpose  in  counter  • 
acting  a  tendency  to  interpret  too  narrowly  the  words 
'8  Of  April  191 4.  »9  See  Plato,  Rep,  vi.  486  A 


232  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

'  Reason  '  and  '  Goodness  '  as  designations  of  the  object  of 
our  search.  We  have  seen  that  this  attempt  makes  a 
special  appeal  to  the  artistic  temperament ;  and  it  may 
be  that  theists  have  too  often,  especially  in  their  argu- 
ments for  the  existence  of  God,  shown  a  disposition  to 
represent  the  Divine  Intelligence  too  exclusively  after 
the  pattern  of  a  philosopher  rejoicing  in  the  faultless 
concatenation  of  his  inferences  ;  of  a  judge  dispensing 
rewards  and  punishments  according  to  exact  desert ;  or 
of  a  skilled  mechanic  adapting  means  ingeniously  to  ends  ; 
forgetting  that  not  only  in  such  as  these,  but  also  in  the 
creative  passion  of  the  artist  (of  whom  we  are  more 
reminded  by  the  study  of  Nature),  we  have  an  image  of 
the  eternal  Love  "  che  move  il  sole  e  I'altre  stelle."  »° 
"  The  world,"  it  has  been  said,  in  scornful  rejection  of 
what  seemed  to  the  author  of  the  epigram  an  ignoble 
optimism — "  the  world  is  a  tragedy,  and  not  a  pudding." 
The  saying  expresses  in  a  striking  way  a  sentiment 
which  is  probably  widely  spread  among  cultivated  men 
to-day.  But  does  not  it  point  to  the  fact  that  a  view 
of  the  world  which  ignored  the  tragedy  in  it  or  was 
content  to  suppose  it  merely  abolished  as  if  it  had  not 
been,  would  not  be  a  veritable  optimism  ? 

The  great  religious  poet  of  Italy  had  such  happy  thoughts 
of  the  ultimate  issues  of  universal  experience  that  he  could 
call  the  pilgrimage  in  the  course  whereof  he  imagined 
himself  as  entering  into  all  its  phases  not  a  tragedy  but 
a  comedy.  Nevertheless,  it  was  certainly  for  him  a  comedy 
which  enclosed  a  tragedy  within  itself,  yet  a  tragedy 
of  which  he  could  ascribe  the  authorship  to  no  less  than 

la  somma  sapienza  e  il  primo  amore.^' 


**  Dante,  Paradise,   xxxiii.    145.  ='  Inferno,  iii.  6. 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  233 

I  am  far  from  saying  that  there  may  not  be  in  the  details 
of  Dante's  exposition  of  his  tremendous  theme  much 
which  as  it  stands  one  could  not  accept ;  that  we  may 
not  miss  in  his  mood  some  strains  of  feehng  which  we  might 
think  of  too  high  worth  to  be  thus  missing  without  grave 
loss.  But  at  least  he  bears  impressive  witness  to  the 
power  of  the  rehgious  consciousness  to  recognize  the  supre- 
macy of  Reason  and  Goodness  in  the  world,  while  in  no 
way  failing  to  appreciate  the  place  of  tragedy  therein. 

It  is,  I  think,  from  Plato  that  we  shall  best  learn  the 
possibiUties  of  a  view  which  finds  in  Reason  and  Goodness 
that  supreme  principle  of  unity  in  the  search  for  which 
Philosophy  may  be  said  to  consist.  I  speak  here  of 
Reason  and  Goodness  together,  for  the  intimate  connexion 
of  the  two  is  fundamental  in  his  teaching.  He  has  told 
us  22  of  the  disappointment  which  his  master  Socrates 
expressed  with  the  work  of  Anaxagoras  wherein  after 
the  promise,  which  had  seemed  to  Socrates  so  full  of  hope 
that  he  would  account  for  the  order  of  the  world  by  Reason, 
he  fell  back  in  every  particular  case  on  merely  mechanical 
explanations  and  did  not  give  the  kind  of  answer  which 
his  announcement  of  Reason  as  the  grand  principle  of 
explanation  had  led  his  readers  to  expect.  For  when 
we  ask  the  reason  of  a  man's,  of  a  reasonable  being's 
actions,  we  look  for  a  statiement  of  his  motives — that  is, 
for  an  answer  to  the  question  :  '  What  is  the  good  of 
doing  that  ?  '  If  we  ask  why  Socrates  does  not  escape 
from  his  prison,  as  his  friends  urge  him  to  do,  we  do  not 
give  a  reasonable  reply  if  we  simply  describe  the  mechanism 
of  his  hmbs  which  make  it  impossible  for  him  to  move 
while  he  is  sitting  still ;  but  we  do  give  a  reasonable  reply 
if  we  allege  his  conscientious  objection  to  disobeying  his 

»*  Pheedo,  97  b  ff. 


234  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

country's  laws.  The  famous  doctrine  of  the  Idea  or 
Form  of  Good  in  the  Republic  of  Plato  is  but  the 
expansion  of   this   Socratic   thought. 

In  that  dialogue's  we  are  shown  how  the  soul  comes 
to  distinguish  among  the  objects  of  perception  by  the 
senses  a  solid  body  from  what  seems  at  first  to  be  a  solid 
body,  but  proves,  on  the  apphcation  of  the  rational  prin- 
ciple that  what  is  real  cannot  be  self-contradictory,  to 
be  only  the  reflection  or  shadow  of  a  solid  body.  Then 
we  watch  the  same  principle  applied  even  to  these  real 
objects  of  sense,  as  we  may  call  them,  and  find  that  they 
too  are  found  to  be  fuU  of  contradictions,  if  we  essay  to 
treat  them  as  objects  of  Knowledge  or  Science  properly 
so  called. 

The  line  A  is  long  compared  with  the  lin^  B,  but  short 
compared  with  the  line  C  ;  this  act  is  just  done  here  and 
now,  but  unjust  done  there  and  then  ;  we  may  be  mis- 
taken about  the  straightness  of  a  visible  track,  or  the 
courage  of  a  particular  man  ;  but  what  straightness  is, 
and  what  courage  is,  we  knpw  ;  and,  if  we  did  not,  the 
question  whether  this  road  is  straight  or  this  man  brave 
would  be  as  idle  as  the  celebrated  riddle  propounded  at 
the  mad  tea  party  about  the  raven  and  the  writing  desk. 24 
It  is  with  the  '  Ideas  '  or  '  Forms,'  the  eternal  natures 
which  are  single  and  permanent  in  all  the  shifting  multi- 
tude of  instances,  that  Knowledge  in  its  various  depart- 
ments is  concerned.  But  the  impulse  to  seek  the  one 
in  the  many  must  drive  us  farther  yet.  We  must  ask  the 
reason  why  the  different  orders  of  reality  stand,  as  it  were, 
side  by  side,  the  science  of  each  resting  upon  its  own 
peculiar  principles,  yet  in  the  world  wherein  we  find  our- 
selves   intricately    intermingled.     We    may    think — I    do 

»3  vi.  509  c  flf.  =4  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland,  c.  7. 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  235 

not  here  pretend  to  be  closely  following  my  Platonic  text — 
of  the  indifference  of  the  mechanism  of  Nature  to  con- 
siderations of  Beauty  or  of  Duty,  while  yet  the  worlds 
which  it  is  the  business  of  the  artist  or  the  moralist  to 
explore  rest  upon  the  foundation  of  the  physical  order 
and  presuppose  it  at  every  point.     We  may  note  that, 
as  Lotze  25  has  well  pointed  out,   except  in  a  world  of 
necessary  connexion,  wherein  the  issues  of  actions  may  be 
depended  upon,  the  freedom  of  the  will  could  have  no 
scope  for  exercise.     Yet  to  seek  to  subordinate  the  laws 
of  one  kind  of  science  to  the  principles  of  another — for 
instance,    to    deduce    mathematical    tiuths    from  moral 
premises  or  vice  versa — can  only  lead  to   sophistry   and 
confusion.     Everything,  in  Butler's  often-quoted  phrase,  26 
is  what  it  is,  and  not  another  thing.     The  only  hope  of 
reaching  an  ultimate  satisfaction  of  that  aspiration  after 
unity  which  is  the  very  mainspring  of  Reason  and  to 
which  the  sciences  which  we  already  possess  themselves 
owe  their  origin,  must  he,  I  am  persuaded,  in  the  direction 
which  Plato  has  indicated  to  us,  when  he  speaks  of  the 
vision  of  an  Idea  or  Form  of  the  Good,  in  the  hght  whereof 
all  the  orders  of   Reality  should  be  exhibited  as  good, 
because  filling  a  place  in  one  supreme  system,  which  would 
not  satisfy  us  were  any  of  them  missing  from  it.     Should 
we  not  readily  allow  that  with  the  absence  of  any  of  them 
the  world  would  be  worse  off  ?     And  if  we  could,  like  the 
Creator  in  the  Book  of  Genesis, ^7  see  the  whole  world  to 
be  '  very  good,'  would  not  that  give  satisfaction  to  our 
reason,   so   that  we    should  not  feel  constrained   to   ask 
any  further  '  Why  is  this,  or  wherefore  is  that  ?  ' 

It  will  be  evident  from  what  I  have  just  said   that,  in 

»5  Philosophy  of  Religion,  c.  7  §  61,  tr.  Ladd,  p.   102. 

-^  Preface  to  the  Sermons.  =7  Gen.  i.  31. 


236  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

speaking  of  the  Reason  and  Goodness  in  which  our  search 
for  an  ultimate  principle  of  unity  in  the  world  of  our 
experience  could  come  to  rest,  we  must  not  suppose  our- 
selves to  have  to  do  with  some  restricted  type  of  the  one 
or  of  the  other.  It  would  be  wholly  in  vam  to  ask,  for 
example,  that  a  reason  should  be  given  for  everything, 
if  by  reason  we  mean  a  syllogistic  premise  or  a  mathe- 
matical axiom.  We  see  quite  clearly  that  neither  syllogism 
nor  mathematics  can  from  their  own  resources  account 
for,  say,  poetry  or  patriotism  or  self-sacrifice.  Nor, 
when  I  speak  of  Goodness  as  the  supreme  principle,  have 
I  in  view  merely  the  right  conduct  of  men  in  society. 
Great  art  has  no  moral  nor  has  exact  science.  Yet  these 
things  are  most  certainly  good.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
have  not  to  do  with  a  mere  verbal  equivocation,  for,  in 
speaking  of  Reason  and  Goodness  as  the  goal  of  our 
inquiries,  we  do  not  lay  aside  what  we  have  learned  of 
their  nature  in  the  narrower  field  of  mathematics  or  of 
morals.  In  thus  meaning  by  Reason  and  Goodness,  when 
regarded  as  one  supreme  principle,  at  once  far  more  than 
the  reason  used  in  mathematics,  or  than  the  goodness  of 
human  conduct,  and  yet  as  that  for  the  contemplation 
of  which  the  soul  is  educated  by  the  mathematical  sciences 
and  by  the  discipline  of  social  life,  I  am,  as  all  who  recollect 
his  Republic  will  perceive,  merely  repeating  what  we  find 
in  Plato's  account  of  the  methods  and  aims  of  the  philo- 
sophical life,  an  account  which  on  the  whole  has,  I  think, 
not  been  bettered  by  any  of  his  successors. 

But,  while  we  acknowledge  the  profundity  of  Plato's 
insight  into  the  intimate  connexion  of  Reason  with  Good- 
ness, and  the  significance  of  the  assertion  that  Goodness, 
as  the  satisfaction  of  Reason,  is  the  supreme  principle 
of  unity  in  the  world,  we  have  to  observe  that  he  does 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  237 

not  give  so  clear  an  answer  as  we  might  desire  to  the 
question  which  we  may  naturally  raise  as  to  the  relation 
of  this  supreme  principle  of  Goodness  or  the  Good  to  God. 
This  may  seem  surprising  if,  as  Professor  Burnet  says.^s 
it  was  no  other  than  Plato  that  first  made  Theism  a 
philosophic  issue.  But,  when  we  turn  to  the  treatment 
of  this  th«me  in  the  tenth  book  of  the  Laws,  we  find  that 
what  Plato  is  there  concerned  to  maintain  is  that  the 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  attest  the  existence 
of  a  Soul  or  Souls,  having  every  sort  of  excellence,  by 
which  these  movements  are  directed.  Yet  the  "  visible 
gods,"  the  stars  with  the  sun  as  their  chief  and  centre, 
or  rather  the  intelligences  or  souls  which  guide  these  in 
their  courses,  are  not  for  Plato  the  supreme  and  ultimate 
Reality.  This  is  to  be  found  in  the  eternal  Ideas  or 
Forms,  forming  a  single  system  under  their  unifying 
principle,  the  Form  or  Idea  of  Good,  which  is  the  Sun  of 
the  intelligible  universe. '9  It  is  no  doubt  of  this  highest 
reality  of  all  that  he  is  speaking  in  a  figure  when  he  says 
in  the  TimcBus  30  that  the  Maker  and  Father  of  the  world 
is  hard  to  discover,  and  to  speak  of  his  nature  to  all  men 
impossible.  But  it  is  only  in  a  figure  that  he  is  here 
speaking.  Where  he  speaks  of  Gtod  plainly,  it  is  of  a 
Soul  most  excellent  that  he  speaks,  not  of  the  Good  which 
is  no  Soul  but  a  Form  or  Idea.  Professor  Burnet  has 
well  pointed  out  (as  I  have  already  observed  31)  that  the 
controversies  determined  at  the  Council  of  Nicaea  have 
as  their  philosophical  background  the  problems  to  which 
this  Platonic  distinction  of  God  from  the  Good  neces- 

*8  See  Greek  Philosophy,  Thales  to  Plato,  §  254,  p.  336. 
*9  Cp.  Studies  in  the  History  of  Natural  Theology,  p.  94. 
30  Tim.  28  c. 

3'  Lecture  VII,  p.  174.     See  Burnet,  Greek  Philosophy,  Thales  to 
Plato,  §  255,  p.  337. 


238  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

sarily  gave  rise.  We  may  put  it  thus,  that  the  reUgious 
consciousness  of  the  Christian  Church  (whose  thinkers 
were  at  that  time  trained  for  the  most  part  in  Platonic 
traditions)  could  not  find  satisfaction  in  an  object  of 
worship  which,  however  exalted,  was  less  than  the  Highest ; 
and  hence  was  driven  to  aihrm  an  absolute  equality  between 
the  Logos,  the  Word  or  Manifestation  of  God,  and  the 
Supreme  Father,  whose  manifestation  and  utterance 
he  was  acknowledged  to  be.  Apart  from  this  affirmation 
we  may  say  that  an  impersonal  Goodness  is  left  beyond 
and  above  the  personal  God — the  divine  Being  with 
whom  personal  relations  are  possible.  According  to  this 
affirmation,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Highest  is  personal. 
He  is  not,  indeed,  a  person,  because  the  highest  personal 
activities,  those  of  knowledge  and  love,  demand  an  inter- 
course of  person  with  person  ;  and  yet  the  Highest  (it 
was  thought)  could  not  be  dependent  for  what  is  intrinsi- 
cally necessary  to  its  nature  upon  beings  less  exalted. 
But  there  is  nothing  impersonal  above  and  beyond  the 
Persons  to  whom  the  supreme  Good  belongs,  or  rather 
who  in  their  eternal  mutual  intercourse  are  that  supreme 
Good. 

The  view  thus  outlined  is  one  which  it  is  quite  possible 
to  criticize.  Especially  perhaps  is  this  the  case  with 
respect  to  the  insistence  implied  in  it  upon  the  transcendent 
self-sufficiency  of  the  Divine  Being.  But  it  is  not  to  this 
that  I  now  wish  particularly  to  call  attention.  It  is  rather 
to  the  following  two  points.  In  the  first  place,  though  we 
certainly  do  not  conceive  that  Goodness  is  no  more  than 
an  affection  of  this  or  that  good  person  ;  for  we  may 
recognize  the  imperfection  by  which  every  good  person 
falls  short  of  the  ideal  in  virtue  of  his  approximation  to 
which  he  is  called  '  good  '  at  all  ;  yet  on  the  other  hand  an 


RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY  239 

impersonal  Goodness  seems  something  incomplete  and 
abstract.  "  There  is  none  good  but  one,  that  is  God,"  32 
because  none  other  is  Goodness,  the  Good.  But  if  not 
even  God  is  that,  then  there  is  no  exception  to  the  state- 
ment that  none  is  in  the  fullest  sense  good  ;  and  where  in 
that  case  is  this  Goodness  really  after  all  ?  In  the  second 
place,  we  see  the  peculiar  contribution  of  the  religious 
experience  to  the  metaphysical  problem  of  the  ultimate 
principle  of  unitj^  in  its  consciousness  of  a  personal  inter- 
course therewith,  which  will  not  be  content  to  regard 
itself  as  consciousness  of  a  personal  intercourse  with 
anything  less  than  ultimate  Reality  ;  though  it  welcomes 
the  conviction  that  this  personal  intercourse  is  not  some- 
thing accidental,  as  it  were,  to  the  essence  of  that  ultmiate 
Reality,  but  is  an  admission  to  participation  in  what  is 
from   all  eternity  its  inner  activity. 

It  is  a  famiHar  reflection  that  in  the  activity  of  right 
thinking  or  knowing  we  take  our  thought  to  be  just  what 
must  be  in  any  mind  that  is  occupied  with  the  same  objects, 
so  far  as  it  is  thinking  aright,  or  genuinely  knowing. 
We  have  no  such  sense  of  a  private  property  in  knowledge 
as  we  may  have  in  opinions  in  respect  of  which  we  may 
agree  to  difter.  It  belongs,  we  may  say,  to  the  nature  of 
Mind  as  such  so  to  think.  If  we  care  to  introduce  the 
mention  of  a  Divine  Mind,  we  may  put  it  that  we  are 
rethinking  the  thoughts  of  God  ;  or  we  may  prefer  the 
expression  that  God  is  thinking  thus  in  us.  In  Aristotle's 
theology  the  Divine  Life  is  conceived  as  nothing  else 
than  an  activity  of  knowledge  ;  and  our  highest  intellectual 
activity  is  represented  as  not  distinguishable  from  God's 
except  by  being  temporary  and  intermittent,  while  his 
is  eternal. 33  Just  in  the  same  way  does  the  religious 
3s  Mark  x.  18.  33  Eth.  Nic.  x.  8.  1178  B  25  ff. 


240  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

experience  which  has  expressed  itself  in  the  dogmatic 
system  of  Christianity  recognize  its  consciousness  of 
personal  intercourse  as  nothing  less  than  the  consciousness 
of  an  eternal  process  within  the  Godhead. 

We  have  now  reached  what  appears  to  be  a  definite 
contribution  made  by  the  religious  experience  to  our 
conception  of  the  supreme  principle  of  unity.  As  the 
aesthetic  experience  reveals  in  Nature  a  spirituality  which 
apart  from  that  experience  cannot  be  shown  to  be  there, 
so  does  the  religious  experience  reveal  in  the  ultimate 
ReaUty  something  which  apart  from  religious  experience 
is  not  there  discoverable.  This  may  be  properly  called 
Personality,  for  it  is  revealed  in  and  through  an  experience 
of  personal  intercourse.  It  will  be  my  task  in  the  con- 
cluding Lecture  of  the  present  course  to  dwell  more  in 
detail  upon  the  imphcations  of  the  revelation  in  such 
experience  of  this  aspect  of  the  Divine  Nature. 


LECTURE   X 

DIVINE    PERSONALITY 

The  claim  that  Theology  should  be  based  upon  Religious 
Experience  has  in  our  times  become  very  famiUar  to  those 
interested  in  such  matters.  But  it  is  a  thought  of  which 
little  use  can  be  made,  unless  we  possess  a  fairly  clear 
conception  of  the  nature  and  scope  of  that  which  we 
describe  by  the  name  of  Religious  Experience.  To  the 
important  part  played  in  drawing  attention  to  the  subject 
in  this  country  by  the  well-known  Gifford  Lectures  of 
the  late  Professor  William  James  on  the  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience  is  perhaps  to  a  considerable  extent 
due  the  fact  that  this  expression  is  apt  to  suggest  too 
exclusively  either  the  emotions  and  excitements  associated 
with  what  is  called  '  sudden  conversion  '  or  the  extra- 
ordinary states  of  consciousness  so  often  described  in  the 
biography  of  those  to  whom  the  name  of  '  mystics  '  is 
commonly  applied. 

The  prominence  of  these  types  of  religious  experience 
in  James's  treatment  of  his  theme  is  easily  explicable. 
In  the  first  place  the  facts  collected  and  classified  Dy 
Professor  Starbuck  ^  which  formed  the  basis  of  James  s 
induction  were  drawn  almost  exclusively  from  accounts 

'  In  his  Psychology  of  Religion  (2nd  ed.  London  1901),  to  which 
James  contributed  a  Preface. 

S41 


242  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

given  by  members  of  American  Protestant  communities 
accustomed  to  require  proof  of  a  definite  individual 
change  of  mind  in  their  younger  adherents  as  a  condition 
of  admission  to  full  religious  privileges.  In  the  second 
place  the  individualism  characteristic  of  American  religion 
and  encouraged  by  this  traditional  tendency  in  certain 
churches  to  lay  so  great  a  stress  on  the  importance  for 
spiritual  life  of  individual  feelings  was  thoroughly  con- 
genial to  the  bent  of  James's  own  mind  ;  while  his  interest 
in  abnormal  psychology  naturally  directed  his  attention 
to  those  phenomena  which  pass  by  the  name  of  mystical, 
and  which  may  also  be  said  to  belong  rather  to  the  private 
than  to  the  corporate  aspect  of  rehgious  life.  This  latter 
aspect  seems  to  have  appealed  to  him  but  little,  and  his 
comparative  neglect  of  it  was  the  proximate  occasion  of 
his  friend  and  colleague  Josiah  Royce's  striking  reassertion 
of  its  significance  in  the  last  book  that  he  wrote,  The 
Problem  of  Christianity ^ 

But,  though  the  records  of  conversions  and  of  mystical 
raptures  are  by  no  means  to  be  neglected  by  the  student 
of  rehgious  experience  or  ignored  in  the  construction  of 
a  theology  claiming  to  interpret  such  experience,  it  is,  I 
am  convinced,  a  great  mistake  to  forget  here,  or  indeed 
in  the  investigation  of  any  form  of  human  experience, 
the  lesson  taught  us  in  Plato's  Republic, 3  that  we  shall 
find  it  easier  to  read  what  in  the  individual  soul  is  written 
in  letters  hard  to  discern,  if  we  turn  first  to  their  repro- 
duction on  a  larger  scale  in  the  institutions  of  society. 

In  the  pubhc  theologies  and  ecclesiastical  polities  of 
mankind  we  have  the  best  expression  of  the  normal 
religious  experience  of  the  peoples  among  whom  they  have 
arisen.     This  is  by  no  means  to  say  that  they  merely 

>  New  York,  1913.  3  ii.    368   D. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  243 

represent  the  feelings  and  desires  of  average  and  common- 
place individuals.  The  founders  of  religions  and  of 
churches,  without  whom  they  would  not  have  come  into 
being,  have,  for  the  most  part,  been  prophets — that  is 
to  say,  men  of  original  religious  genius  ;  and  the  same 
is  true  to  a  considerable  extent  of  the  organizers  and 
reformers  through  whom  these  religions  and  churches 
have  assumed  their  present  form  ;  but  these  prophets 
have  themselves  sprung  from  and  have  exhibited  in  its 
most  highly  developed  form  the  general  religious  type  of 
their  nation  or  community  ;  and  in  the  creeds  and  institu- 
tions which  have  taken  their  rise  from  their  teaching 
we  have  a  mirror  of  their  activity,  so  far  as  it  has  proved 
effective  in  stimulating  and  raising  the  level  of  spiritual 
life  around  them,  and  in  maintaining  it  at  the  height  to 
which  it  has  thus  been  hfted.  Without  wishing  to  deny 
that  the  '  questionnaire  '  may  sometimes  extract  informa- 
tion of  value  even  in  this  region  of  inquiry,  one  may  not 
unreasonably  suspect  that  the  characteristically  religious 
sentiments  of  reverence  and  awe  may  make  it  an  instru- 
ment of  investigation  peculiarly  unfit  for  wholesale  em- 
ployment in  the  field  of  ReUgion.  No  doubt  there  is 
a  risk,  to  which  we  do  well  to  be  aUve,  of  forgetting  that 
the  language  or  behaviour  which  has  become  traditional 
in  religion  may  often  reflect  rather  the  thoughts  and  feelings 
of  those  who  first  introduced  them  than  of  those  who 
at  present  use  them.  Nevertheless  we  are  more  likely 
to  discover  what  men's  thoughts  and  feehngs  are  from 
the  language  and  behaviour  in  which  they  are  at  any 
rate  content  to  acquiesce,  and  under  whose  influence  their 
religious  life  has  unfolded  itself,  than  from  answers  given 
or  refused  in  a  cross-examination  to  which  they  are  not 
accustomed,  and  which  may,  by  its  apparent  lack  of  delicacy 


244  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

in  touching  on  the  most  sacred  intimacies,  reduce  them 
at  once  to  an  indignant  or  obstinate  silence. 

I  have  already,  in  the  first  Lecture  oi  this  course  3 
expressed  my  general  view  of  the  relation  of  the  religious 
experience  embodied  in  historical  religions  to  the  Natural 
Theology  which  Lord  Gifford  chose  to  be  the  theme  of 
the  Lectures  appointed  under  his  will.  I  said  there 
that,  in  my  judgment,  while  every  actual  system  of  Natural 
Theology  presupposes  a  definite  type  of  religious  experience 
expressed  in  a  historical  religion,  the  ultimate  goal  in  all 
speculations  mast  be  a  system  which  shall  presuppose 
the  whole  religious  experience  of  mankind.  Of  course 
the  speculations  which  1  am  offering  in  these  Lectures 
make  no  pretence  to  be  at  any  but  a  very  remote  distance 
from  that  goal.  Nevertheless  no  one  can  claim  in  dealing 
with  this  subject  to  be  in  touch  with  the  general  move- 
ment of  the  civihzed  thought  of  to-day  who  does  not 
extend  his  view  beyond  the  boundaries  of  a  particular 
system  of  organized  religion  and  does  not  keep  before  his 
mind  the  ideal  of  a  universal  religion  and  a  universal 
theology  whose  shrine  and  school  shall  be  "  neither  in 
this  mountain  nor  yet  in  Jerusalem  "  but  "  in  spirit  and 
in  truth."  5 

So  long,  however,  as  the  personal  experience  of  any  one 
engaging  in  the  pursuit  of  this  ideal  is  inevitably  of  a 
character  far  from  comprehensive,  he  will  do  well  to 
guide  himself  by  two  considerations. 

In  the  first  place  he  will  recognize  it  as  his  special  task 
to  discover,  so  far  as  he  may,  the  universal  significance  of 
that  particular  tradition  whereof  he  is  by  his  training 
and  convictions  an  inheritor,  the  contribution  which  it  has 
to  make  toward  any  final  synthesis.  In  the  second  place, 
4  P.  31  flf.  5  John  iv.  21,  23. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  245 

he  will  frankly  acknowledge  that  in  classifying  religious 
traditions  or  experiences  among  themselves  as  '  higher  ' 
or  '  lower,'  although  he  may  very  possibly  be  often  mis- 
taken as  to  the  particular  rank  to  be  assigned  to  a  particular 
tradition  or  experience,  he  is  in  no  wise  disloyal  to  the 
ideal  mentioned  above,  which  does  not  and  cannot 
require  that  all  religions  be  placed  upon  one  level,  or 
that  the  student  of  these  should  hold  himself  debarred 
from  preferences  resting  not  upon  mere  prejudice,  but 
upon  a  deliberate  application  of  a  suitable  criterion. 

But  what  is  a  suitable  criterion  ?  I  think  that  there 
is  one,  but  that  it  is  easier  to  apply  than  to  formulate  it. 
Two  statements,  however,  about  it  I  would  venture  to 
make,  which  may  at  first  sight  appear  to  contradict  one 
another.  One  of  these  statements  will  be  that  we 
may  rightly  test  a  religion  by  its  success  in  encouraging, 
and  being  itself  encouraged  by,  moral  and  intellectual 
progress  among  its  votaries.  The  other  statement  will 
be  that  the  only  true  test  of  the  rank  of  one  reUgion 
as  compared  with  another  is  to  be  sought  in  the 
greater  or  less  extent  to  which  it  exhibits  the  specific 
nature  of  Religion,  and  not  that  of  Science  or  of 
Morality  as  distinguished  from  ReHgion.  How  these 
two  appareritly  inconsistent  positions  can  be  recon- 
ciled may  be  perhaps  most  conveniently  suggested 
by  an  illustration  from  a  different  region  of  ex- 
perience. We  should  most  of  us  readily  admit  that  in 
ranking  Venus  and  Adonis  and  Love's  Labour's  Lost  below 
Hamlet  and  King  Lear  we  were  taking  into  account  the 
greater  moral  and  intellectual  interest  of  the  latter  as 
compared  with  the  former.  Yet  we  should  not  consider 
ourselves  bound  upon  that  account  so  to  judge  of  poetry 
by  the  exceUence  of  its  '  moral,'  or  by  the  correctness  of 


246  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

the  scientific  or  historical  information  imparted  in  it, 
as  to  run  into  danger  of  placing  Mrs.  Turner's  Cautionary 
Stories  above  Romeo  and  Juliet  or  the  well-known  doggerel 
verses  which  give  the  dates  of  the  Norman  Conquest  or 
the  Fire  of  London  above  the  jEneid  or  the  Divine  Comedy. 
What  we  should  ask  about  a  poem  would  be,  not  '  What 
conduct  does  this  advise  ?  '  or  (as  the  legendary  mathe- 
matician is  reported  to  have  asked  about  Paradise  Lost) 
'  What  does  this  prove  ?  '  but  rather  '  Does  this  express 
emotions  consistent  with  moral  and  intellectual  self- 
respect  in  the  mind  of  him  who  entertains  them  ? 

Yet  it  may  be  objected  that  this  question  too  is  surely 
one  which  only  a  prig  would  put  to  himself,  at  any  rate 
in  this  expUcit  form  ;  and  in  dealing  with  this  objection 
(which  has  my  full  sympathy),  we  shall,  I  think,  discover 
by  the  way  an  important  difference  between  the  sphere 
from  which  I  took  my  illustration,  the  sphere  of  Art,  and 
that  which  is  at  present  our  chief  concern,  the  sphere  of 
;^eHgion. 

When  we  are  enjoying  the  nonsense  of  the  Walrus  and 
the  Carpenter,  the  exciting  incidents  in  the  New  (or  for 
that  matter  in  the  old)  Arabian  Nights,  or  even  the 
deUghtful  society  of  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  whose 
doings  Jane  Austen  has  chronicled  for  us,  we  should  without 
hesitation  reply  in  the  negative  to  any  one  who  should 
ask  us  the  question  whether  we  should  be  content  if 
Uterature  never  penetrated  further  and  deeper  into  the 
mysteries  of  hfe,  never  took  a  more  comprehensive  view 
of  the  world  than  we  find  in  these  charming  works  of 
fancy  and  imagination.  But  we  are  content  to  refresh 
ourselves  with  these,  to  spend  a  holiday  with  them  without 
impairing  our  moral  and  intellectual  self-respect — even 
feeling,  indeed,  that  to  keep  an  eye  all  the  time  on  the  fact 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  247 

that  we  are  not  impairing  it  is  somehow  to  fail  in  the  true 
hoHday  spirit  of  enjoyment  and  to  write  ourselves  down 
as  prigs. 

But  in  Religion  we  are  directly  concerned  with  the  whole 
of  life  and  experience  ;  hence  while  we  may  no  more 
estimate  the  rank  of  a  religion  by  the  application  of  a 
non-religious  standard, — as  though  Religion  were  (as  it 
has  sometimes,  indeed,  been  held  to  be)  merely  a  means 
to  morality  or  to  intellectual  culture, — than  we  may  apply 
non-aesthetic  standards  in  the  criticism  of  works  of  art  ; 
yet  we  may  here  speak  not  merely  of  a  negative  con- 
sistency with  the  spiritual  atmosphere  of  a  high  moraUty 
and  of  a  disinterested  search  for  truth,  but  of  a  positive 
harmony  with  such  an  atmosphere  as  a  consideration 
which  may  determine  us  in  calling  one  form  of  faith 
higher  or  lower  than  another, 

I  now  come  to  the  use  which  I  would  make  for  my 
present  purpose  of  these  general  considerations.  It 
falls  under  two  heads.  In  the  first  place,  if  we  compare 
the  rehgions  of  the  world  on  some  such  principle  as  I 
have  just  indicated,  we  shall,  I  think,  have  no  difficulty 
in  acknowledging  that  there  is  none  which  has  shown 
more  capacity  for  maintaining  and  even  developing  itself 
in  the  atmosphere  of  what  would  be  generally  admitted 
to  be  the  highest  moral  and  intellectual  culture  to  be  found 
at  present  in  the  world  than  the  religi9n  which,  as  we  have 
had  occasion  to  see,^  has  more  than  ^ny  other  laid  stress 
on  the  presence  of  Personality  in  Qod.  This  will  justify 
us  in  attaching  especial  importanpe  to  the  witness  of 
Christian  experience  ;  and  this  is  also,  as  it  happens, 
the  only  form  of  rehgious  experience  of  which  I  myself 
can  claim  that  intimate  knowledge  which  training  and 
*  See  above,  Lecture  III. 


248  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

conviction  alone  can  impart.  And,  in  the  second  place, 
so  far  as  a  greater  stress  on  Personality  in  God  than  is 
elsewhere  to  be  observed  is  characteristic  of  Christianity 
among  the  religions  of  the  world,  it  can,  I  think,  be  shown 
that  this  is  no  merely  extrinsic  nor  accidental  feature  of 
that  religion,  but  the  fuller  development  therein  of  a 
factor  in  some  degree  present  in  all  reUgion. 

This  factor  is,  as  those  who  have  followed  the  course 
of  our  discussions  will  have  divined,  no  other  than  what 
passes  under  the  name  of  '  divine  transcendence.'  Religion 
can  never,  as  we  have  seen,  7  be  content  with  a  merely 
immanent  object,  though  it  is  also  no  doubt  true  that  it 
can  never  be  satisfied  with  one  merely  transcendent.  It 
is  indeed  in  its  discontent  with  either  of  these  alternatives 
that  it  reveals  itself  as  essentially  concerned  with  nothing 
but  the  whole,  the  '  Absolute '  of  modern  philosophy. 
But  while  nothing  seems  to  possess  beyond  question  the 
character  which,  under  the  name  of  Transcendence, 
ReUgion  has  been  shown  to  require  in  its  object,  the 
character  of  a  reality  fully  equal  to  that  of  the  subject, 
except  what  can  claim  to  be,  hke  the  subject  itself, 
personal,  it  would  also  be  difficult  to  deny  that  even 
where  there  is  no  explicit  assertion  of  Personality  in  the 
object  of  Religon,  the  religious  relation  is  on  t;.i^  whole 
thought  of  as  exhibiting  an  emotional  quahty  of  the 
sort  especially  associated  with  personal  intercourse, 
whether  hostile  or  friendly.  We  shall  moreover,  I  think, 
find  that  the  more  definite  ascription  of  personaUty  to 
the  object  of  Religion  will  generally  correspond  to  a 
fuller  reahzation  of  his  own  personality  by  the  wor- 
shipper. I  shall  not  dwell  upon  this  correspondence 
at  present ;  for  it  will  fall  to  be  more  fully  considered 
7  See  Lecture  VII,  p.   159. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  249 

in  my  second  course.  But  it  goes  along  with  the  other 
circumstances  which  I  have  mentioned  immediately  above 
to  justify  my  assertion  that  the  express  affirmation  of 
Personality  in  God,  though  made,  strictly  speaking,  by 
one  alone  of  the  great  historical  religions  of  the  world, 
is  the  natural  culmination  of  a  tendency  traceable  in  all 
Religion,  and  therefore  deserving  of  especial  attention 
from  any  one  desiiing  to  construct  a  theology  upon  a 
broad  basis  of  religious  experience. 

It  will,  I  think,  be  not  unprofitable  to  point  out  how, 
in  the  case  of  some  of  the  principal  rehgious  conceptions 
— I  will  take  for  consideration  those  of  Sin,  Forgiveness, 
Justice,  Sacrifice,  Union — the  acknowledgment  of  Per- 
sonahty  in  God  does  actually  add  both  to  their  intelli- 
gibility and  to  their  moral  power. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  conception  of  Sin 
cannot  or  does  not  exist  except  in  connection  with  the 
thought  of  an  offended  personaUty.  The  history  of 
Religion  shows  that  this  is  very  far  from  being  the  case. 
Among  primitive  peoples  it  is  probably  more  often  imagined 
as  a  kind  of  uncleanness  or  infection  which  can  by  some 
act  such  as  expectoration,  imposition  of  hands,  or  what 
not,  be  transferred  to  some  other  person  or  thing  and  so 
got  rid  of.  The  terrible  consequences  which  it  is  thought 
to  entail  are  represented  as  ensuing  upon  it  rather  after 
the  manner  of  direct  physical  effects  than  after  that  of 
punishments  inflicted  by  a  person  whose  displeasure  it 
has  incurred.  On  the  higher  levels  of  religious  develop- 
ment it  may  still  be  regarded  as  working  out  its  baleful 
issues  after  an  impersonal  fashion,  as  we  find  it  regarded, 
for  example,  in  ancient  Greek  tragedy  or  in  the  Indian 
doctrine  of  Karma,  rather  than  as  bringing  them  about 
only   through   the   intervention   of   a   divine   Judge      It 


250  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

may  even  be  contended  that  this  view  of  the  matter  is 
a  higher  one,  because  assimilating  the  moral  order  of  the 
universe  to  the  august  likeness  of  inexorable  natural  law 
instead  of  using  language  which  ma}'^  appear  to  aim  at 
introducing  into  it  the  arbitrary  element  of  personal 
feeling. 

In  opposition  to  this  suggestion,  I  can  but  declare  my 
conviction  that  to  regai-d  Sin  as  an  offence  against  a 
personal  authority,  and  still  more  to  regard  it  as  an  affront 
to  a  loving  Father,  is  a  more  intelligible  and  a  more 
ethically  significant  way  of  thinking  about  it  than  it  is 
to  conceive  it  after  the  analogy  of  a  physical  defilement 
or  an  automatic  mechanism.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that 
in  our  experience  of  the  personal  action  of  human  rulers 
or  parents  there  is  present  not  only  an  element  which, 
in  Kant's  famous  phrase,  is  fit  to  be  law  for  all  rational 
beings,  and  is  recognized  as  such  by  our  common  reason, 
but  also  an  element  which  depends  on  the  idiosyncrasies 
of  the  individual's  peculiar  temperament.  But,  even 
allowing  for  the  moment  that  the  latter  element  is  un- 
questionably something  of  inferior  worth,  and  that  nothing 
corresponding  to  it  is  to  be  sought  in  a  divine  personality, 
should  we  be  doing  any  more  violence  to  our  imagination 
in  representing  the  divine  character  to  ourselves  as  a 
personal  character  wherein  desire  and  will  are  completely 
coincident  with  the  requirements  of  Reason  than  in 
supposing  an  impersonal  order  which  should  yet  be  capable 
of  inspiring  in  a  supreme  degree  the  veneration  and  the 
confidence  which  we  render  in  varying  measure  to  wise 
and  good  persons  ?  It  seems  to  me  clear  that  the  former 
presentation  does  but  take  for  real  a  perfection  our 
comprehension  of  which  is  implied  in  the  very  contrast 
with  it  of  the  imperfection  of  human  personality,  whereas 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  251 

the  latter  unites  by  a  merely  verbal  device  characteristics 
which  cannot  really  be  thought  together,  while  secretly 
canceUing  the  inconsistency  by  indulgence  in  an  emotional 
attitude  which  presupposes  a  quite  different,  indeed  a 
personal,  object. 

We  may,  however,  before  leaving  this  subject,  consider 
a  Uttle  more  closely  what  may  for  the  moment  be  called 
the  impersonal  view  of  Sin,  with  a  view  of  bringing  it 
into  a  more  detailed  comparison  with  that  which  inter- 
prets it  as  essentially  a  personal  offence.  It  may  be 
thought,  indeed,  that  to  speak  of  any  view  of  sin  as 
'  impersonal '  must  be  misleading,  since  Sin  must  be  re- 
garded as  at  any  rate  committed  by  if  not  against  a  deter- 
minate person.  But  we  may  here  recall  the  significant 
fact  that  Buddhism,  while  adopting  the  doctrine  of  Karma, 
which  is  characteristic  of  Indian  reUgion  in  general, 
eliminated  Personality  by  its  denial  of  the  existence 
of  any  substantial  soul,  and  thereby  gave  an  interesting 
illustration  of  the  close  connexion  which  always  exists 
between  a  rehgious  doctrine  of  Personality  in  Grod  and  a 
genuine  concern  for  Personality  in  man. 

The  experience  of  mankind  has  not  confirmed  the  belief 
in  a  detailed  dependence  of  the  course  of  nature  upon  the 
social  conduct  of  men  which  is  often  found  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  religious  development.  The  prevalence  of  sexual 
irregularity  among  a  people  does  not  lead,  as  primitive 
men  sometimes  suppose,  to  the  blighting  of  its  crops  ; 
and  however  true  as  a  general  rule  it  may  be  that  a  virtuous 
life  conduces  to  the  maintenance  of  physical  health  and 
a  vicious  hfe  to  its  decay,  yet  moral  goodness  and  bodily 
vigour  are  far  too  often  divorced  from  one  another  to  make 
possible  an  identification  of  the  rules  of  hygiene  with  the 
law  of  hoUness.     Thus  that  ancient  view  of  Sin  which 


252  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

assimilates  its  connexion  with  its  penalty  to  a  natural 
sequence  of  cause  and  effect,  and  does  not  greatly,  if  at 
all,  interest  itself  with  the  question  against  whom  it  is 
committed,  seems  destined  to  disappear  with  the  advance 
of  knowledge  and  the  consequent  subversion  of  the 
sanctions  by  which  the  avoidance  of  it  was  formerly 
secured.  The  doctrine  of  Karma,  indeed,  is  not  necessarily 
involved  in  the  ruin  of  this  view,  for  it  cannot  be  sub- 
jected to  the  same  empirical  tests,  since  it  is  only  from 
the  observed  fates  of  individuals  in  one  life  that  we  can 
ascertain  the  moral  quality  of  those  deeds  done  in  other 
lives  which,  according  to  this  doctrine,  have  entailed  those 
fates.  But  those  who  share  the  conviction  expressed 
above,  that  the  recognition  of  a  personal  relation  in  the 
sinner  to  God  makes  the  whole  conception  of  Sin  more 
intelligible  and  more  ethically  significant  than  it  can  be 
without  such  a  recognition,  cannot  but  hold  that  the 
lack  of  it  is  a  serious  drawback  to  the  doctrine  of  Karma, 
as  well  as  to  cruder  views  of  Sin  which  resemble  it  in 
dispensing  with  a  God  against  whom  Sin  is  committed 
and  by  whom  it  is  judged. 

It  would,  however,  .be  unfair  to  pass  over  altogether 
without  comment  an  argument  which  is  not  infrequently 
met  with  and  which  challenges  the  morality  of  introducing 
the  notion  of  personal  displeasure  into  our  view  of  Sin, 
by  pointing  to  its  consequence  in  the  doctrine  of  sl  forgiveness 
of  sins,  a  doctrine  which  is  (it  may  be  alleged)  of  a  dis- 
tinctly immoral  tendency.  This  is  a  challenge  to  be 
taken  up,  especially  as  this  doctrine  is  one  which,  while 
it  is  intimately  associated  with  the  conception  of  Sin  as  a 
personal  offence,  very  specially  distinguishes  the  religious 
from  the  merely  ethical  view  of  the  world.  On  the  general 
question  of  the  mutual  relations  of  Morality  and  Religion 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  253 

I  do  not  here  propose  to  dwell,  because  we  shall  encounter 
it  again  in  the  course  ot  the  discussions  which  I  have 
reserved  to  my  second  series  of  Lectures.  But  on  this 
particular  matter  of  the  morality  of  the  Forgiveness  of 
Sins  it  will  be  in  place  to  say  something  at  this  point  of 
our  investigations. 

Insistence  upon  the  importance  of  the  Forgiveness  of 
Sins  is  obviously  connected  with  the  peculiar  horror  of 
Sin  which  is  a  mark  of  Religion  rather  than  of  MoraUty 
when  considered  apart  from  Religion.  Yet  this  rehgious 
horror  of  Sin  need  not  be  combined  with  a  faith  in  a  pro- 
vision for  its  forgiveness.  The  doctrine  of  Karma  is  a 
religious  doctrine  resting  upon  and  expressing  a  profound 
sense  of  the  seriousness  of  Sin,  but  it  leaves  no  room  for 
the  forgiveness  as  distinct  from  the  expiation  of  Sin.  While 
therefore  the  objection  which  is  sometimes  raised  from 
the  side  of  '  mere  Morality  '  to  the  religious  view  of  Sin 
as  diverting  the  mind  from  positive  activity  in  well-doing 
to  gloomy  meditation  upon  the  ill-spent  past  may  be 
brought  (I  do  not  say  that  it  would  be  justly  brought) 
against  the  doctrine  of  Karma  as  against  doctrines  embody- 
ing a  similar  view  of  Sin  under  other  religious  systems, 
the  disciple  of  that  doctrine  may  be  tempted  to  join  with 
the  exponent  of  a  Morahty  divorced  from  Religion  in 
charging  the  beUever  in  the  Forgiveness  of  Sins  with 
weakening  the  sense  of  the  gravity  of  those  inevitable 
consequences  of  ill-doing  which  no  change  of  mind  on  the 
part  of  the  doer  or  of  any  one  else  can  undo. 

Nevertheless  I  think  it  may  be  shown  that  only  if  a 
doctrine  of  the  Forgiveness  of  Sins  falls  short  of  being 
what  it  professes  to  be  does  it  deserve  this  reproach ;  and 
that,  when  it  is  what  it  pretends  to  be,  it  possesses  an 
ethical  depth  and  value  beyond  that  of  rival  doctrines 


254  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

which  may  at  first  sight  present  an  aspect  more  awe- 
inspiring  in  their  uncompromising  disregard  of  human 
weakness,  their  vigorous  enforcement  of  the  melancholy 
lesson  of  the  '  vanity  of  human  wishes.' 

Here,  however,  I  can  only  attempt  a  very  summary 
indication  of  the  way  in  which  this  claim  on  the  part  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  Forgiveness  of  Sins  may  be  maintained. 
In  my  second  course  of  Lectures  I  hope  to  deal  at  greater 
length  with  the  problems  upon  which  at  present  I  can  do 
no  more  than  touch. 

A  genuine  forgiveness  of  sins  must  imply  a  thorough 
recognition,  both  by  the  sinner  forgiven  and  by  him  who 
forgives,  of  the  nature  of  the  sin  committed.  It  must 
thus  be  quite  inconsistent  alike  with  impenitence  on  the 
sinner's  part  or  with  indifference  to  the  gravity  of  the 
offence  on  his  who  forgives.  No  doubt  it  is  possible  to 
speak  of  a  forgiveness  of  those  "  who  know  not  what  they 
do,"  8  but  in  such  a  case  those  who  are  said  to  be  for- 
given must  miss  the  full  experience  of  forgiveness,  except 
in  so  far  as  by  such  a  subsequent  understanding  of  their 
action  as  necessarily  involves  repentance  they  appropriate 
the  pardon  which  has  been  by  anticipation  already  pro- 
nounced. And  on  the  other  hand,  a  sinner  who  does  not 
find  in  what  is  offered  him  under  the  name  of  forgiveness 
a  comprehension  of  the  heinousness  of  his  offence  corre- 
spondent to  the  depth  of  his  own  penitence  cannot  but 
feel  that  he  has  failed  to  attain  that  for  which  he  seeks. 
Here  at  once  we  see  how,  if  personal  relations  exist  only 
between  human  beings,  the  penitent  sinner  must  be  often 
thus  defrauded  ;  while  if,  on  the  other  hand,  he  can  always 
pass  beyond  the  neighbour  he  has  offended  to  God  and 
say  with  the  Psalmist  of  the  Miserere,  "  Against  thee 
8  Luke  xxiii.  34. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  255 

have  I  sinned  "  9  he  can  attain  in  the  experience  of  divine 
forgiveness  what  otherwise  he  must  for  ever  go  without. 

But  the  supposed  immoraUty  of  the  Forgiveness  of 
Sins  disappears  if  we  -regard  it  in  this  way  ;  and  no  kind 
of  Forgiveness  which  falls  short  of  this  has  any  claim  to 
rank  as  an  idea  which,  in  Mr.  Bradley's  phrase,^"  "  is 
really  required  in  practice  by  the  highest  religion."  And 
as  to  the  superior  dignity  which  may  be  attributed  to  an 
eternal  Order  conceived  impersonally,  whether  after  the 
manner  of  Karma  in  Indian  religion  or  otherwise,  I  can 
but  repeat  what  I  have  in  substance  already  said,  that  we 
can  only  reverence  it  in  so  far  as  we  impart  into  our  attitude 
towards  it  an  element  which  is  at  home  only  in  personal 
intercourse  ;  for  a  system  definitely  realized  as  impersonal, 
of  which  we  can  say  that  it  "as  impotently  rolls  as  you 
or  I  "  "  we  are  far  more  likely,  when  we  find  ourselves 
helplessly  in  its  grip,  to  loathe  and  curse  than  to  venerate. 
And  yet,  even  in  loathing  and  cursing  it,  we  shall  not 
cease  to  illustrate  the  unconquerable  tendency  of  the 
human  soul  to  envisage  its  relation  to  the  ultimate  Reality 
in  terms  of  personahty  ;  we  shall  but  be  treating  it  as  a 
devil  instead  of  as  a  God. 

I  am  not  forgetting  in  what  I  have  just  said  the  austere 
and  lofty  piety  of  the  Stoics  and  Spinoza  which  would 
find  freedom  and  peace  in  the  world  by  willing  that  what 
we  cannot  help  happening  should  happen.  But  I  feel 
sure  that  here  again  the  use  of  the  name  of  God  is  really 
in  contradiction  with  the  conception  of  his  nature  ex- 
pHcitly  held.     "  Our  wills  are   ours   to   make   them  "  " 

9  Psa.  li.  4. 

*«  See  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality ,  p.  433.     Cp.  p.  439. 

"  Fitzgerald,  Rubdiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam  (3rd  and  4theds.),  §72. 

"  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  introductory  verses. 


256  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

God's,  but  this  saying  has  no  meaning  if  God's  will  is 
a  mere  figure  of  speech,  if  it  is  not  at  least  as  really  what  we 
mean  by  will  as  ours  is.  But  here,  as  in  all  similar  cases 
we  must  remember,  if  we  are  to  be  true  to  our  purpose 
of  basing  our  theology  upon  religious  experience,  that  our 
starting-point  must  be  our  experience  of  submission  to 
the  divine  Will  and  not  an  attempt  to  imagine  the  divine 
self -consciousness  in  abstraction  from  that  experience. 

Having  dealt  so  fully  with  the  conceptions  of  Sin  and 
of  Forgiveness  as  religious  ideas  which  seem  to  possess 
a  greater  value  in  the  context  of  a  personal  relation  to 
God  than  otherwise,  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  dwell  in 
the  same  detail  on  the  others  which  I  mentioned  as 
agreeing  with  these  in  that  respect — that  is,  on  Justice, 
Sacrifice,  and  Union.  But  some  fevv  observations  may, 
perhaps,  be  profitably  made  upon  each  in  turn. 

In  the  case  of  Justice  it  might  plausibly  be  argued 
that  ideal  or  absolute  Justice  may  be  best  conceived  on 
the  analogy  rather  of  the  working  of  a  law  than  on  that 
of  an  award  by  a  personal  judge.  It  might  be  pointed 
out  that  we  regard  the  estabhshment  of  a  legal  system, 
whereof  persons  are  but  the  ministerial  agents,  as  an 
advance  upon  the  stage  of  social  development  in  which 
one  is  left  to  the  chances  of  finding  on  the  judgment-seat 
a  Solomon  or  an  unjust  judge  who  "  fears  not  God  nor 
regards  man  "  ^3  as  the  case  may  happen  to  be.  This 
seems  to  point  to  the  progressive  diminution  or  elimina- 
tion of  the  personal  factor  as  indicating  the  direction  we 
should  follow  in  our  attempts  to  work  out  the  thought  of 
a  supreme  Justice. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  must  note  that  there  is  much 
reason  for  doubting  whether  the  notion  of  a  personal 
'3  Luke   xviii.   4. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  257 

source  of  Justice,  whether  in  a  sovereign  or  in  God,  is 
not  on  the  whole  younger  than  that  of  a  custom  or  law 
valid  on  its  own  account  and  only  declared  by  the 
individual  judge. 

But  I  shall  do  no  more  than  call  attention  to  this  fact, 
and  shall  not  now  pursue  the  consideration  of  it ;  it  will 
come  before  us  again  when  in  my  second  course  of  Lectures 
I  attempt  to  trace  the  bearing  of  the  conclusions  reached 
in  this  course  upon  our  view  of  the  various  activities  in 
which  human  Personality  expresses  itself.  I  only  mention 
it  at  present  to  show  that  the  elimination  of  the  personal 
element  is  far  from  constituting  the  whole  story  of  the 
development  of  our  notion  of  Justice.  What  I  would 
rather  insist  upon  here  is  that  our  preference  for  an  im- 
personal law  over  the  personal  discretion  of  the  judge  is 
due  chiefly  to  the  security  afforded  by  it  against  the 
uncertainty  which  must  prevail  where  the  discretion 
must  be  now  one  man's  and  now  another's.  There  are 
persons  to  whose  discretion  one  would  commit  oneself 
with  far  more  confidence  than  to  the  generalities  of  a 
legal  rule  ;  and  hence  our  care  to  leave  as  little  scope  as 
possible  in  human  tribunals  for  the  vagaries  of  personal 
caprice  does  not  at  all  carry  with  it  an  ultimate  preference 
for  the  impersonal  over  the  personal,  which  we  must 
needs  carry  over  even  into  our  notion  of  divine  justice. 

Again,  impersonal  Justice  is  contrasted  with  Mercy. 
So  opposite  to  one  another  may  the  two  conceptions 
seem  to  be  that  men  have  sometimes  imagined  them  to 
be  the  respective  attributes  of  different  divine  persons. 
But  we  should  in  fact  scarcely  call  an  unmerciful  person 
just ;  and,  in  speaking  of  a  person  as  unjust,  we  should 
think  rather  of  his  hard  treatment  of  those  who  do  not 
deserve  it  than  of  his  comparative  over-leniency  to  others  ; 


258  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

we  should  certainly  think  it  strange  to  describe  him  on 
account  of  such  over-leniency  as  a  merciful  man.  The 
truest  Justice  would  seem  to  include  Mercy,  and  Mercy 
in  the  highest  sense  would  vindicate  for  itself  the  name 
of  Justice  ;  and  it  is,  I  am  convinced,  easier  to  represent 
to  ourselves  such  a  union  as  reaUzed  in  a  personality 
than  after  any  other  fashion.  It  is  not  unworthy  of 
remark  in  this  connection  that  in  pohtical  communities 
the  prerogative  of  mercy  is  habitually  left  to  be  personally 
exercised  by  the  head  of  the  State  or  by  those  who  rule 
in  his  name,  after  everything  possible  has  been  done  to 
exclude  his  or  their  interference  in  the  administration  of 
justice. 

In  turning  to  another  important  religious  conception, 
that  of  Sacrifice,  we  find  that  investigation  of  its  history 
by  no  means  goes  to  show  that  a  sacrifice  is  always  thought 
to  be  offered  to  a  determinate  person  any  more  than 
Sin  is  always  thought  to  be  committed  against  a 
determinate  person  or  Justice  to  be  that  which  is  in 
accordance  with  the  decree  of  a  determinate  person. 
Thus  it  is  not  a  merely  trifling  proposition  to  say 
that  we  see  the  notion  of  Sacrifice  in  its  most  intelli- 
gible and  ethically  significant  form  where  Sacrifice  is 
regarded  as  an  act  of  personal  intercourse  between  a 
worshipper  and  his  God.  It  belongs  to  Sacrifice  in  the 
fullest  and  highest  sense  that  what  is  sacrificed  should 
be,  in  the  very  surrender  of  it,  recognized  by  the  sacrificer 
as  good.  Hence  there  may  seem  to  be  at  the  heart  of 
the  notion  a  contradiction  ;  there  is  certainly  a  paradox, 
in  so  far  as  something  is  treated  at  once  as  good  (since,  if 
it  is  not  good,  there  is  no  sacrifice  in  the  surrender  of  it)  and 
as  not  good  (since  it  is  not  pursued,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
declined).     This  paradox  becomes  intelligible  only  where 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  259 

the  thing  in  question  being  surrendered  to  God  is 
regarded  as  safe  in  him  ;  in  whom,  although  not  directly 
in  itself,  its  goodness  is  enjoyed,  even  when  surrendered. 
To  this  an  analogy  may  be  easily  found  in  the  mutual 
relations  of  persons  but  hardly  elsewhere  ;  and  it  cannot 
be  disputed  that  to  such  mutual  relations  of  persons  as 
those  of  which  one  is  here  thinking  we  attribute  a  value 
superior  to  any  which  could  be  assigned  to  Sacrifice  as  a 
religious  act  on  any  theory  but  that  of  an  intercourse  with 
the  God  capable  of  expression  in  terms  of  personal  relations. 
The  religious  idea  of  Union  with  the  Supreme  Reality, 
the  ruling  idea  of  Mysticism  as  we  may  call  it,  is  the  last 
of  those  which  I  propose  to  take  in  illustration  of  my 
thesis  that  the  recognition  of  Personahty  in  God  imparts 
to  religious  ideas  generally  an  increase  of  intelligibility 
and  of  ethical  significance.  A  particular  interest  belongs 
to  this  idea  in  connexion  with  our  present  inquiry.  For 
some  thinkers  who  lay  especial  stress  on  Divine  Personality 
are  inclined  to  be  suspicious  of  al  mystical  language, 
just  because  to  them  a  union  of  two  personalities  in  any 
such  intimate  sense  as  that  which  mystical  language 
suggests  appears  to  them  impossible  m  ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  thinkers  of  a  different  turn  of  mind  are  disposed 
to  appeal  to  this  same  mystical  language,  which  is  so 
recurrent  in  the  history  of  Religion,  in  proof  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  notion  of  Divine  Personahty  to  the  require- 
ments of  the  rehgious  consciousness.  I  cannot,  however, 
here  enter  upon  anything  like  a  full  examination  of  this 
controversy,  my  general  view  of  which  may  be  easily 
inferred  from  the  discussion  of  kindred  issues  in  pre- 
ceding Lectures.  There  is  a  celebrated  phrase  which 
might  seem  to  suggest  a  loss  of  Personality  in  the  cUmax 
■4  I  am  thinking  especially  of  Dr.  Rashdall. 


260  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

of  Union — I  am  thinking  of  the  figure  under  which  entrance 
upon  Nirvana,  the  goal  of  the  Buddhist's  spiritual  ambition, 
is  described  in  the  words  :  "  The  dewdrop  slips  into  the 
shining  sea."  '5  In  this  phrase  there  is,  in  fact,  nothing 
to  mark  the  existence  of  PersonaUty  on  either  side.  The 
dewdrop  is  no  more  personal  than  the  ocean  into  which 
it  is  absorbed.  In  itself  this  might  indicate  no  more 
than  that  the  contrast  of  the  personal  existence  of  the 
saint  in  this  life  with  the  impersonal  nature  of  the  Eternal 
Being  from  which  at  death  he  ceased  to  be  distinct  was 
absent  from  the  mind  of  the  framer  of  the  phrase.  But 
it  is  doubtful  if  even  finite  Personality  has  any  place  in  the 
original  philosophy  of  Buddhism.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
great  mass  of  mystical  hterature  in  which  the  union  with 
God  is  described  under  the  imagery  of  a  marriage  between 
lovers  bears  impressive  testimony  to  the  truth  that  the 
human  soul  is  for  the  most  part  best  satisfied  when  in  the 
culmination  of  its  religious  experience  it  recognizes  the 
antitype  of  the  most  intimately  personal  form  which 
human  fellowship  can  assume. 

Now  it  is  doubtless  possibL  to  admit  (as  Mr.  Bradley 
would,  he  tells  us,'^  be  willing  to  admit)  that  our  relation 
to  God  may  be  rightly  represented  as  a  personal  relation, 
while  insisting  that  this  will  not  entitle  us  to  attribute 
PersonaUty  to  the  Absolute,  the  supreme  and  ultimate 
Reality.  For  to  do  this  would  (according  to  this  way 
of  thinking)  be  to  transfer  the  imaginative  language  of 
Rehgion  without  modification  to  Metaphysics  which,  as 
it  is  sometimes  hinted,  is  in  a  very  special  sense  the 
sphere  of  '  bitter  earnest.' 

It  is  certainly  not  my  intention  to  deny  that  the  language 

'5  See  Edwin  Arnold's  Light  of  Asia,  bk.  viii.  ad  fin. 
''  See  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality,  pp.  432,  451. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  261 

of  Religion  is  always  imaginative  and  in  a  sense  mytho- 
logical, and  that  to  take  it  to  be  literally  and  prosaically 
true  as  it  stands  will  be  apt  to  lead  us  into  error.  Nor 
would  I  have  the  metaphysician  abate  a  jot  of  his  deter- 
mination to  pursue  the  intellectually  satisfying  at  all 
costs.  But  (and  here  Mr.  Bradley  would  assuredly  agree) 
it  is  not  the  test  of  the  intellectually  satisfying  that  it 
should  be  expressible  in  prosaic  language.  Nor  can 
Religion  be  content  that  her  language  should  be  treated 
as  '  merely  figurative  '  ^7  in  the  sense  in  which  the  term 
might  be  used  of  an  eighteenth-century  poet's  conventional 
invocation  of  the  Muse.  The  language  of  Religion  we 
must  no  more  dismiss  without  discrimination  as  figurative 
than  accept  it  without  discrimination  as  scientifically 
exact.  I  will  go  back  to  an  illustration  of  which  I  made 
use  earlier  in  these  Lectures. '^  A  child's  picture  of  his 
elders' lives  is  no  doubt  very  unlike  indeed  to  those  elders' 
lives  as  known  to  themselves  from  within.  Or  again,  we 
may  think  of  the  distance  which  may  separate  a  savage's 
notion  of  what  the  ruler  or  generalissimo  of  a  great  civil- 
ized State  has  to  do  from  such  an  one's  actual  conduct 
of  government  or  warfare.  Yet  as  the  child  grows  up  or 
the  savage  is  educated,  there  need  be  no  shock  in  their 
gradual  discovery  of  the  linlikeness  in  many  respects  of 
their  earlier  picture  to  the  reality.  But  what  if  it  should 
dawn   upon   the   child   that   those   he   called  his   parents 

17  I  have  seen  an  eighteenth-century  translation  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment intended  to  satisfy  readers  to  whom  the  Authorized  Version 
seemed  written  in  a  style  which,  tried  by  the  standard  of  Hume 
and  Robertson,  was  rude  and  unpolished.  John  vi.  63  was  (if 
my  memory  does  not  deceive  me)  thus  translated :  "  The  discourse 
which  I  have  been  addressing  to  you  is  entirely  figurative  ;  and  to 
take  it  in  any  other  sense  would  be  to  be  guilty  of  the  highest 
absurdity." 

>*  See  Lecture  V,  p.  131. 


262  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

were  not  real  persons  at  all  ?  Were  he  only  to  learn 
that  they  were  no  more  than  foster  parents,  or  that  they 
did  not  love  him  as  they  seemed  to  do,  the  discovery 
might  be  baffling,  disheartening,  discouraging  enough. 
But  what  would  it  be  in  comparison  to  the  discovery  that 
they  had  no .  more  independent  existence  than  the  cor- 
respondents of  Mr.  Toots  ?  19  Would  not  this  be  a  com- 
plete subversion  of  the  world  in  which  he  had  grown  up 
and  a  grave  threat  to  his  sanity  ? 

The  application  of  this  to  our  present  subject  will,  I 
think,  be  obvious.  We  shall  readily  believe  that  in  personal 
intercourse  with  God  we  behold  so  small  a  part  of  his  ways  '«> 
that  nothing  we  could  report  of  them  but  would  probably 
or  even  certainly  require  drastic  revision  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  fuller  knowledge.  We  shall  indeed  all  the 
more  readily  believe  it,  the  more  deeply  penetrated  we 
are  with  the  sense  of  being  truly  in  communion  with  the 
Highest.  But  that  this  intercourse  is  not  a  genuinely 
personal  intercourse  at  all ;  that  personality  in  "  him 
with  whom  we  have  to  do  "  "  is  no  less  figurative  than 
the  image  of  the  father's  table  or  the  mother's  breast  or 
the  bridegroom's  embrace,  which  we  may  use,  turn  and 
turn  about,  despite  their  mutual  inconsistency,  as  suits 
our  mood  ;  that  there  is  no  reciprocal  knowledge  and  love 
coming  to  meet  us  at  all ;  or  that,  if  there  is,  it  is  not  on 
the  part  of  the  true  God,  who  is,  as  we  may  say,  at  the 
back  of  everything  ;  to  discover  this — and  really  to  beUeve 
in  our  discovery — would  it  not  mean  the  overthrow  of 
our  religion,  the  revelation  of  such  an  incoherence  in  the 
world  as  must  confound  the  reason  and  shake  knowledge 
from  its  very  foundations  ? 

'9  In  Dickens's  Domhey  and  Son,  see  c.   12. 

*°  See  Job  xxvi.   14.  ^'  See  Heb.  iv.   13. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  263 

I  think  that  it  would  ;  and  yet,  before  we  conclude 
that  religious  experience  favours  the  affirmation  of  per- 
sonality in  God,  we  must  turn  aside  to  consider  a  possible 
assertion  by  the  opponents  of  this  position  of  a  religious 
interest  which  may  be  enlisted  upon  their  side.  Is  it  not 
a  principal  interest  of  Religion,  it  may  be  asked,  to  be 
kept  from  falling  into  Idolatry  ?  And  is  there  not  in  the 
view  which  has  been  maintained  in  this  Lecture,  and  in 
the  reasons  by  which  it  has  been  supported,  an  encourage- 
ment of  a  tendency  in  that  direction,  full  of  danger  to 
the  very  cause  we  have  been  endeavouring  to  serve  ? 

From  the  point  of  view  of  a  philosophical  theology  we 
must  understand  by  Idolatry  the  worship  as  God  of  that 
which,  at  the  moral  and  intellectual  level  occupied  by  the 
worshipper,  is  less  than  the  Highest.     The  acquiescence 
by  thinkers  Uke  Mr.  Bradley  and  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  the 
distinction    of    God    from   the    Absolute    must,    it  would 
seem,  imply  the  condemnation  of  any  one  who  stands  at 
their  high  level  of  philosophical  culture  to  a  choice  between 
Idolatry   and  no  Religion   at  all.     I  suspect  that   Signor 
Cioce  would  agree  with  me  in  drawing  this  inference  from 
their   premises,   and  for  himself  would  frankly  embrace 
the  second  of  the  alternatives  allowed.     Of  Mr.  Bosanquet 
I  will  speak  later  on  ;    but  Mr.  Bradley  would,  I  think, 
prefer  the   former,   while  disclaiming  the  insinuation   of 
disparagement  conveyed  by  the  word  Idolatry,  for  which 
he  would  probably  prefer  to  substitute  '  worship  of  an 
Appearance.'     I    must    confess    to    an    unwillingness    to 
accept  either  alternative,  and  am  ready  to  justify  this 
unwillingness  on  the  ground  that,   as   I  have  elsewhere 
said  in  another  connexion,  "  I  do  not  think  it  possible  to 
remain  content  with  the  reduction  of  an  experience  so 
manifestly    substantial,    rational,    and   harmonious    as    a 


264  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

genuine  religious  experience  can  be  to  the  rank  of  mere 
mirage  or  sheer  ilkision."  -'  And,  while  no  doubt  this  is 
by  no  means  what  Mr.  Bradley  and  Mr.  Bosanquet  intend 
to  effect,  I  am  convinced  that  denial  of  the  claim  of 
Religion  to  take  as  its  object  nothing  less  than  the  supreme 
and  ultimate  Reality  can  have  no  other  issue. 

In  the  history  of  Religion  the  idolatry  of  to-day  is  often 
the  true  religion  of  yesterday,  and  the  true  religion  of 
to-day  the  idolatry  of  to-morrow,  but  only  if  we  look 
for  the  identity  of  a  religion  merely  in  the  identity  of  the 
symbolism  which  it  employs.  But  that  religion  which 
has  its  face  set  ever  towards  the  Supreme  Reality  and 
which  does  not  lower  its  thought  thereof  to  accord  with 
its  symbols,  but  rather  adapts  its  symbols,  or  replaces 
them  by  others  better  adapted  to  the  highest  and  best 
that  it  can  conceive,  this  is  true  Religion,  whatsoever 
symbols  it  may  use. 

On  the  other  hand,  such  a  new  religion  as  Mr.  Bradley  ^3 
seems  to  desire,  which  metaphysics,  although  its  full 
requirements  would  still  not  be  met,  might  be  able,  "  in 
some  sense  "  (as  he  says),  "  to  justify  and  support,"  would, 
I  fear,  like  the  worship  of  the  Golden  Calf  in  Horeb,  wear 
from  the  first  the  air  of  a  '  substitute  '  provided  to  satisfy 
those  whose  impatience  w^ill  not  allow  them  to  wait  for, 
or  to  do  without,  the  genuine  article,  and  could  hardly 
in  the  long  run  be  able,  any  more  than  that  worship,  to 
escape  condemnation  as  an  idolatrous  service. 

In  personal  intercourse  with  our  friends,  if  we  rest 
content  with  our  first  impressions  or  even  with  the  im- 
pressions gained  at  any  stage  of  our  friendship  and  cease 
from  further  exploration  of  their  characters    we  are  so 

'»  Group  Theories  of  Religion,  p.  i8i. 

'3  See  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  44G. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  265 

far  falling  short  of  the  ideal  of  such  intercourse.  It  may 
be  that  our  own  limitations  or  those  of  our  friend  really 
make  this  check  to  our  activity  inevitable.  Still  it  is  a 
failure.  The  most  successful  marriage  is  that  where 
romance  does  not  culminate  with  the  wedding  bells,  but 
where  each  partner  can  to  the  end  address  the  other  in 
those  brave  words  of  Browning's  : — 

Grow  old  along  with  me  ! 
The  best  is  yet  to  be. '4 

But  if  we  can  go  so  far  as  this  in  speaking  of  the  converse 
of  human  lovers  and  friends,  it  is  surely  the  very  essence 
of  that  other  converse  which  we  call  ReUgion,  where  we 
have  to  do  with  no  finite  being,  but  with  the  Supreme 
and  Eternal,  that  the  possibilities  of  discovery  therein 
are  inexhaustible.  To  suppose  that,  on  the  attainment 
of  any  level  of  insight,  we  have  seen  all  there  is  to  see, 
this  is  surely  to  commit  the  sin  of  Idolatry,  no  matter 
how  free  we  may  be  from  any  temptation  to  "  bow  down 
to  wood  and  stone."  25  But  it  is  not  necessary,  because 
we  must  not  suppose  God  to  be  no  more  than  that  of  which 
we  have  experience  in  the  personal  intercourse  of  our 
religion,  to  deny  that  this  is  personal  intercourse  at  all 
We  know  that  it  is,  and,  so  far  as  to  speak  of  Personality 
in  God  expresses  this  knowledge,  it  is  more  than  a  mere 
symbolical  phrase ;  although  any  imaginative  repre- 
sentation of  this  Personality,  such  as  we  cannot  but  form, 
may  fairly  be  called  symbolical,  and  be  acknowledged  to 
be  such  without  any  derogation  from  the  reaUty  of  the 
experience  in  the  service  of  which  it  is  formed. 

That   when   once   the   stage   of   religious   development 

'4  Rabbi  ben  Ezra,  §  i. 

25  Heber,  Hymn  before  a  Collection  made  for  the  S.P.G. 


266  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

is  reached  at  which  reHgious  experience  takes  the  form  ol 
an  experience  of  personal  intercourse,  the  denial  that 
there  is  truly  Personality  in  God  must  in  the  end  lead 
to  the  denial  that  religious  experience  is  an  independent 
and  autonomous  form  of  experience  at  all,  I  feel  for  my 
own  part  no  doubt  whatever. 

I  think  that  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  owes  a  con- 
siderable debt  to  Signer  Croce  for  bringing  this  clearly 
out.     I  am  of  course  very  far  from  disputing  the  sincerity 
and  deep  conviction  of  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  adopting  as  he 
does  a  different  view.     But  it  seems  to  me  that  his  thought 
about  the  Absolute  is  constantly  coloured  by  the  religious 
associations    of    the    language    which    he    employs — the 
language  of  the  religion  which  has  above  all  others  insisted 
on    Personality    in    God.     The    difference    between    his 
intellectual  temperament  and  that  of  Signor  Croce  cor- 
responds to  a  conspicuous  difference  between  the  national 
characters  of  the  peoples  of  which  they  are  such  eminent 
representatives  ;   a  difference  which  shows  itself  in  pohtics 
in  the  fact  that  the  '  anticlericaUsm  '  of  the  Latin  countries 
of  Europe  has  no  precise  analogue  in  Great  Britain.     I 
sympathize,  I  will  admit,  far  more  with  Mr.  Bosanquet 
than   with   Signor   Croce   in   regard   to   their   respective 
attitudes  toward  Rehgion  ;  but  I  think  that  Signor  Croce 
is  in  this  matter  the  more  logical  of  the  two. 

In  an  earUer  Lecture  ^^  I  discussed  the  antithesis 
between  Personality  and  Reason.  We  saw  that  while 
Reason  was  an  essential  feature  of  our  conception  of  Per- 
sonality, it  was  nevertheless  a  difficulty  felt  in  ascribing 
Personality  to  God  that  there  seemed  to  be  involved  in 
PersonaUty  something  which,  unlike  Reason,  was  not 
common  to  all  persons,  in  so  far  as  they  reasoned  aright. 

»*  Lecture  V. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  267 

Yet  should  we  not,  in  ascribing  to  the  thought  of  a  Divine 
Mind  any  variation  from  this  common  Reason,  anything 
capricious  or  arbitrary  or  susceptible  of  an  explanation 
only  from  some  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  thinker, 
be  ascribing  to  it  something  incompatible  with  the  perfect 
Wisdom  and  Truth  which  are  at  any  rate  an  important 
part  of  what  we  mean  by  God  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  the  characteristic  rehgious  emotion 
of  Reverence  was  one  which  it  appeared  hard  to  refer 
to  an  impersonal  object.  The  dilemma  in  which  we  find 
ourselves  thus  placed  has  more  than  once  come  into  view 
in  the  course  of  our  discussions,  without  having  been 
ever  finally  disposed  of.  I  would  now  at  last  invite  your 
attention  to  some  few  considerations  which  are  all  that 
I  have  to  contribute  to  the  solution  of  a  very  real 
difficulty. 

In  what  has  been  said  above  of  a  common  Reason, 
it  will  be  clear  that  we  have  had  in  mind  the  kind  of 
Reason  which  is  exemplified  in  what  are  often  called  the 
exact  Sciences.  These  Sciences,  as  was  pointed  out  in 
the  first  Lecture  of  this  course,  may  be  said  to  take  as 
little  account  as  possible  of  personal  differences.  Though 
of  course  not  all  men  are  equally  endowed  with  the  capacity 
or  the  opportunity  for  carrying  on  the  investigations 
proper  to  these  branches  of  knowledge,  so  that  personal 
differences  affect  in  this  way  the  history  even  of  the 
exact  Sciences  ;  yet  we  regard  the  trains  of  thought 
employed  therein  as  throughout  capable  of  statement 
in  generally  intelligible  terms  and  communicable  not 
only  in  respect  of  the  results  but  also  in  respect  of  the 
processes  which  have  led  up  to  those  results.  We  suppose 
that  from  the  same  premises  any  person  competent  to 
understand  them  must  draw  the  same  conclusions  as  any 


268  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

other.  Moreover,  as  we  saw  in  the  fifth  Lecture,  when 
examming  the  ethical  doctrines  of  Kant  and  Fichte,  we 
seemed  to  find  in  the  field  of  Practical  Reason  also  the 
same  neglect  as  characterized  the  exact  sciences  of  a 
factor  no  less  indispensable  to  Personality  than  the 
rationality  which  distinguishes  it  from  other  forms  of 
individual  existence.  But,  if  we  turn  from  the  exact 
sciences  to  the  field  of  Art,  we  perceive  at  once  an  mterest- 
ing  difference.  We  should  never  say  that  any  competent 
musician  or  man  of  letters  could  see  how  a  symphony  of 
Beethoven  or  a  play  of  Shakespeare  should  be  completed, 
if  only  he  had  the  earlier  movements  or  acts  before  him. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  do  not  regard  this  fact  as  meaning 
no  more  than  that  the  composer  or  poet  may  do  as  he 
hkes,  and  that  he  might  have  finished  off  his  work  in  half 
a  dozen  ways  as  well  as  in  that  upon  which  he  actually 
hit.  On  the  contrary,  we  are  disposed  when  we  see  how 
it  is  done  to  say  That  is  the  only  possible  way  in  which 
it  could  satisfactorily  have  been  done.'  27  Reason,  the 
common  Reason,  could  not  anticipate  but  can  endorse 
it,  and  can  say,  as  Albert  Diirer  is  reported  to  have  said 
of  a  picture  of  his  own,  "  Sir,  it  could  not  have  been 
better  done."  In  the  creative  activity  of  the  artist  we 
seem  to  see  Personality  and  Reason  no  longer  contrasted 
but  reconciled  and  at  one.  God,  it  was  said  of  old,  plays 
the  geometer  ;  28  but  does  he  not  play  the  artist  too  ? 
Or  rather,  is  not  the  artist  made  in  his  image  as  well  as 
the  geometer  and  the  moralist  ?  And  was  not  the  writer 
of  Genesis  happily  inspired  when  he  imagined  the  Creator, 

'7  I  am  especially  conscious  here  of  a  debt  to  the  conversation 
of  my  friend  Mr.  C.  J.  Shebbeare,  though  he  is  in  no  way  responsible 
for  my  use  of  thoughts  suggested  to  me  by  him.  Cp.  his  Challenge 
of  the   Universe,  p.   183,  and  Mr.  Temple's  Mens  Creairix,  p.   154. 

'8  Plutarch,    Qucsst.    Conv.    viii.   2,  p.  718  c.  ff. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  269 

like  a  greater  Diirer,  beholding  "  all  that  he  had  made, 

and   behold   it   was   very  good  "  ?  29 

These  reflections  upon  the  possibility  of  conceiving  a 
factor  in  the  Divine  Mind  distinguishable  from  that  which 
seemed,  when  supposed  to  exist  in  absolute  perfection, 
to  exclude  something  necessary  to  Personality,  and  yet 
by  no  means  describable  as  an  irrational  factor,  may,  I 
think,  be  supplemented  by  some  observations  intended 
to  suggest  that  a  Reason  of  what  may  conveniently 
be  called  the  mathematical  type  is  not  adequate  to  inter- 
pret even  the  world  with  which  the  investigations  of  the 
natural  sciences  themselves  are  concerned. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  even 
according  to  that  view  of  the  physical  world  which  we 
may  call  pre-evolutionary,  but  which  has  not  always  been 
abandoned  by  thinkers  who  have  won  fame  as  exponents 
of  a  philosophy  of  Evolution — I  mean  the  view  which 
looks  to  the  laws  of  matter  in  motion  and  ot  the  com- 
pounding of  simple  elements  for  a  complete  explanation 
of  all  phenomena — there  must,  as  John  Stuart  Mill  pointed 
out,3o  be  supposed  an  initial  collocation  of  material 
elements,  inexpUcable  by  those  laws  themselves,  but  neces- 
sary before  they  could  begin  to  operate  Such  an  original 
collocation  would  in  theistic  language  be  referable  only 
to  the  Divine  Will ;  and  thus  even  an  account  of  the 
world  in  terms  of  a  pre-evolutionary  natural  science  would 
seem  to  involve  in  its  cause  not  merely  a  Reason  whose 
workings  could  be  traced  out  by  a  calculating  intelligence 
from  certain  premises,  but  a  Reason  which  could  estabUsh 
those  premises — in  other  words,  a  Reason  which,  working, 
in  the  phrase  of  Leibnitz  3^  in  accordance  with  the  principle 

»9  Gen.  i.  31.  30  Logic,  iii.  5  §§  8,  9. 

31  See  ThSodicee  i.  8. 


270  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

of  the  best,  is  more  easily  conceived — is  perhaps  only 
conceivable — after  the  analogy  of  a  personal  intelligence. 

If,  however,  the  conception  of  development  be  taken 
seriously,  we  must  refuse  to  accept  the  pronouncement 
of  the  Hebrew  Preacher  that  there  is  no  new  thing  under 
the  sun, 32  and  must  acknowledge,  with  M.  Bergson,  that 
evolution  is  creative  ;  and  in  that  case  it  is  clear  that 
the  Intelligence  which  is  manifested  in  the  world-process 
must  be  thought  of  rather  after  the  analogy  of  the  drama- 
tist than  after  that  of  the  geometer ;  so  that  there  will 
not  seem  to  be  the  same  incongruity  in  the  attribution  of 
Personality  to  it  which  there  certainly  is  when,  in  lepre- 
senting  to  ourselves  the  Supreme  Mind,  we  employ  the 
analogy  rather  of  the  mathematician  or  morahst  than 
that  of   the   artist. 

Shall  I  be  thought  too  fanciful  if  I  add  to  these  two 
considerations  a  third,  drawn  from  the  implication  of 
such  judgments  as  we  constantly  make  when  we  speak 
of  certain  events  imagined  or  even  actual  as  grotesque 
or  fantastic,  or  as  like  bad  dreams  or  nightmares?  We 
seem  to  appeal  herein  to  a  certain  mood  or  style  as  we 
may  put  it,  which,  though  we  could  no  doubt  not  describe 
it  in  detail,  we  feel  to  be  that  of  Reality,  and  with  which 
the  imaginations  or  experiences  in  question  are,  as  it  were, 
out  of  tune.  Although  no  doubt  we  often  speak  of  this 
as  especially  manifested  in  what  we  call  Nature,  that  is 
to  say  in  the  world  as  unaffected  by  the  deUberate  opera- 
tions of  man — the  thought  which  inspires  such  language 
is  of  course  the  ruUng  idea  in  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth — 
yet  it  is  possible  sometimes  to  find  Nature  itself  strike 
a  jarring  note.  We  may  recall  the  familiar  lines  of 
Tennyson  : — 

3»  Eccles.  i.  9. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  271 

Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 
That  Nature  lends  such  evil  dreams  ?  33 

And  the  very  outcries  of  pessimistic  spirits  to  whom  the 
world  seems  a  '  city  of  dreadful  night '  remind  us  of  those 
dream  experiences  in  which  we  comfort  ourselves  in 
the  midst  of  horrors  by  an  assurance  that  we  shall  awake 
out  of  what  must  be  after  all  a  dream  because  it  has  not 
the  familiar  sanity  of  the  real  world.  It  is  not  of  the  mood 
of  Nature  as  contrasted  with  Man  or  with  Spirit  so  much 
as  of  the  mood  of  Ultimate  ReaUty  that  I  am  here  think- 
ing. Coleridge  said  34  that  the  World  was  no  goddess 
in  petticoats  but  the  Devil  in  a  strait  waistcoat.  And 
certainly,  since  the  evil  wills  of  men  undoubtedly  produce 
their  evil  effects  in  the  real  world,  I  cannot  affirm  a  priori 
that  there  are  no  evil  wills  other  than  human  to  which 
what  we  cannot  but  hold  to  be  evil  in  the  world  beyond 
humanity  may  be  traceable. 35  I  should  rather  hold 
it  to  be  Ukely  that  there  are  such.  But  that  does  not 
affect  our  capacity  of  apprehending  what  we  may  call 
the  standard  mood  or  style — as  we  may  speak  of  the 
mood  or  style  of  a  particular  poet  or  artist — whether 
what  we  call  Nature  fully  express  it  or  no.  Such  a  capacity 
seems,  indeed,  to  be  impUed  in  our  aesthetic  judgments 
generally.  We  appreciate  and  take  pleasure  in  all  kinds 
of  eccentric  moods  and  feel  that  it  is  well  to  have  them 
isolated  and  expressed  by  individual  artists,  yet  we  fall 
back  for  more  enduring  satisfaction  on  the  great  masters — 

Who  saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole.  3^ 
But  even  these  are  only  relatively  universal,  only  relatively 

33  In  Memoriam,  §  55.  34  Table  Talk,  April  30,   1830. 

35  See  Problems  in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  p.  270. 

36  Matthew  Arnold,  To  a  Friend. 


272  GOD   AND   PERSONALITY 

satisfying.  They  are  not  always  in  accord  with  one  another, 
and  we  reach  forward  after  a  supreme  mood  which  will 
harmonize  them  without  loss  in  no  merely  eclectic  oi 
artificial  fashion. 37  What  are  we  here  speaking  of  but 
of  that  in  the  Supreme  Spirit  whereof  what  we  call  the 
'  personally  characteristic  '  in  a  finite  spirit  is  the  image, 
just  as  in  that  which  in  knowledge  and  morality  is  common 
to  all  rational  beings  philosophers  have  been  ever  ready 
to  recognize  the  thoughts  or  ideas  of  the  Eternal  Mind  ? 
I  do  not  know  that  I  have  made  intelUgible  the  drift 
of  a  speculation  which  it  would  take  too  long  to  attempt 
further  to  develop  here.  But  I  hope  I  may  have  done 
so  sufficiently  for  my  present  purpose,  and  will  now 
pass  on  to  the  last  topic  to  which  I  shall  call  your 
attention  in  my  present  course. 

It  will  perhaps  have  occurred  to  my  readers  that  the 
arguments  of  this  Lecture  have  pointed  rather  to  a  single 
personality  of  God  than  to  that  distinction  of  persons  in 
God  which,  as  we  saw  before,  was  taught  by  the  theology 
which,  among  the  great  theologies  of  the  world,  had  been 
most  in  earnest  with  the  task  of  working  out  the  impli- 
cations of  Divine  Personality. 

It  has  been  my  contention  throughout  that,  although 
the  existence  of  Personality  must  in  any  case  give  rise  to 
problems  which  cannot  but  embarrass  every  philosophy 
unable  to  allow  to  it  any  but  the  subordinate  significance 
assigned  to  it  by  all  systems  except  those  which  may  be 
classed  as  theistic,  yet  a  satisfactory  defence  of  Divine 
Personality  can  only  be  founded  upon  the  facts  of  religious 
experience.  Nor,  in  my  judgment,  can  a  theological 
account  of   such  religious  experience  as  takes  the  form 

37  Here  too  I  am  conscious  of  a  special  obligation  to  the  conver- 
sation of  Mr.  Shebbeare. 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  273 

of  the  consciousness  of  personal  intercourse  with  the 
Supreme  stop  short  of  conceiving  this  personal  inter- 
course as  itself  falling  within  the  divine  life,  and  thereby 
translating  the  personal  distinction  which  it  involves 
into  a  fundamental  factor  in  the  Supreme  or  Absolute 
Experience  itself.  But  this  personal  distinction  cannot 
be  interpreted  as  involving  a  difference  in  personal 
character  without  abolishing  that  unity  behind  and  through 
all  differences  which  is  what  we  primarily  have  in  view 
in  speaking  of  the  Absolute  at  all.  It  could  only  involve 
such  a  difference  for  those  who  could  accept  a  genuine 
pluralism,  which  would  appear  in  a  religious  form  as  a 
true  and  thorough-going  polytheism. 

Such  a  thorough-going  polytheism,  we  must  observe,  we 
shall  not  find  in  doctrines  of  a  hierarchy  of  many  gods  under 
a  single  chief,  but  rather  in  such  as  leave  us  at  the  end 
with  an  eternal  opposition  of  a  good  and  an  evil  Principle. 3^ 
If,  however,  the  personal  distinction  within  the  Supreme 
Experience  to  which  our  reUgious  experience  testifies  is 
not  to  be  regarded  as  involving  a  corresponding  personal 
difference  of  character,  then  the  analogue,  or  rather 
archetype,  in  God  of  the  personally  characteristic  element 
in  human  souls  will  not  be  diversified  by  the  existence 
of  the  personal  distinction  which,  in  the  language  of 
Christian  theology,  is  called  the  distinction  of  the  Son 
from  the  Father  ;  and  the  language  used  about  it  will 
not  vary  from  what  would  be  used  by  theists  who  recog- 
nize no  such  personal   distinction  within  the  Divine  life. 

This  is  not,  of  course,  to  say  that  the  rich  variety  of 
personal  character  wherein  lies  the  great  interest  of  personal 
intercourse  is  lost  in  the  Supreme  Experience.  In  its 
relation  to  the  personal  distinction  which  we  may  call 

38  See  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  Summa  contra  Gentiles,  i.  42  ad.  fin. 


274  GOD  AND   PERSONALITY 

that  of  the  Son  or  Word  from  the  Father,  it  is  probably 
best  represented  as  constituting  the  content  of  the  Word, 
and  the  corresponding  variety  of  moods  as  "  broken 
lights  "39  of  what  I  have  called  the  supreme  mood,  of 
which  may  be  given  the  name  which  the  poet  gives  it 
from  whom  that  phrase  is  taken — the  name  of  "  immortal 
Love." 

On  the  other  hand,  care  must  be  taken  to  avoid  the 
suggestion  that  this  richness  of  content  is  absent  from  the 
other  term  of  the  personal  distinction,  which  Christian 
theology  calls  the  Father.  For  it  would  destroy  the  very 
meaning  of  that  religious  faith  in  following  the  implica- 
tions of  which  we  have  been  induced  to  borrow  the  ter- 
minology of  the  Christian  schools,  if  the  wealth  possessed 
in  the  religious  life  is  more  or  less  or  other  than  that 
supreme  Good  which  is  the  nature  of  the  Father,  and 
therefore  that  of  whosoever  can  call  himself  his   Son. 

It  is  for  this  very  reason  that  this  bond  of  union,  this 
common  nature  itself,  can  come  to  be  described  in  theo- 
logical phraseology  as  Person  also.  It  might  seem  that 
the  analogy  of  human  intercourse  would  suggest  another 
word.  Two  human  persons'  love  of  one  another  may 
be  the  best  thing  about  each  of  them  ;  yet  we  describe 
it  as  an  affection  or  sentiment  on  the  part  of  each  rather 
than  as  something  no  less  real  than  they  themselves  who 
feel  it.  They  may  come  to  lose  it  and  yet  remain  real. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  we  think  of  the  bond  which  binds 
human  beings  together  as  a  community  or  society  to 
which  they  belong,  and  of  this  as  something  no  less  real 
than  its  members,  or  rather  as  something  more  lasting, 
more  sacred,  more  august  than  any  of  its  members,  some- 
thing for  which  they  may  even  sacrifice  their  lives,  yet 

39  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  introductory  verses. 


\ 


DIVINE   PERSONALITY  275 

we  know  how  even  here  it  does  not  seem  to  possess,  despite 
its  greater  permanence  and  dignity,  that  special  assurance 
of  reahty  which  comes  to  the  individual  members  in  their 
consciousness  of  self.  The  intention  of  the  theological 
phraseology  to  which  I  have  referred  I  take  to  be  no  other 
than  this — to  claim  for  the  life  of  mutual  knowledge  and 
love  which,  in  the  intercourse  of  Religion,  the  worshipper, 
so  far  as  he  realizes  his  sonship,  enjoys  with  the  Supreme, 
and  in  enjoying  it  recognizes  to  be  no  other  than  the 
very  life  itself  of  the  Supreme — to  claim  for  that  life  a 
complete  concrete  reaUty,  in  no  respect  less  than  that 
of  those  who  share  in  it  and  have  their  being  in  it. 
Here  I  must  leave  the  subject  of  Divine  PersonaUty  : 
in  the  sequel  I  hope  to  consider  what  is  the  bearing  upon 
our  conception  of  human  PersonaUty  and  of  its  mani- 
festation in  the  various  phases  of  human  Ufe,  of  that 
conception  of  Personality  in  God  which  I  have  attempted 
to  outline  in  the  present  course  of  Lectures, 


INDEX 


Accident,  222 

Ads  of  the  Apostles,  127,  138,  190 

Agnosticism,   149 

Alexander  Aphrodisiensis,   94  n. 

Alexander,  Prof.  S.,  202/. 

Anaxagoras,  233 

Anselm,  145 

Arabian  Nights,  246 

Archimedes,  50 

Aristotle,    40 ff.,    50,    y^ff-,    80, 

86,    94 «.,    105,    167/.,    214, 

231.  239 
Arnold,  Edwin,  260 
Arnold,   Matthew,   67,   86,   271 
Art,  33,   158,  268ff. 
Athanasian  Creed,  130/.,  210 
Athanasius,  211 
Atonement,   190,  195 
Attribute,  222/. 
Augustine,  38  n.,   163 
Augustus,  38 
Austen,  Jane,  246 

Bacon,   115,  204 
Balaam,  24 
Beauty,  207,   235 
Beethoven,   151/.,  268 
Bellarmine,  55  n. 
Benson,  R.  M.,   195/ 
Bergson,     Prof.    H.,    224,    226, 

228/.,  270 
Berkeley,    i2g ff.,   ly^ 
Bhakti,   88 
Bigandet,  203  n 


Boethius,  47,  50/.,  54/.,  89, 
108/. 

Bosanquet,  Mr.  B.,  17/.,  34, 
52,  54,  100,  102,  Josff.. 
I24#.,  I30#.,  142/.,  191, 
221,   224  n.,  263  /.,   266 

Box,  Mr.  G.  H.,   86 «. 

Bradley,  Mr.  F.  H.,  loi  n.,  102, 
105/.,  loj  n.,  124  «.,  132  j5^., 
i38#.,  151,  153/.,  159, 
174,  180,  191,  209/.,  255, 
260/.,  263/. 

Browning,  E.  B.,  226 

Browning,  Robert,   265 

Buddha,  Buddhisni,  83,  88,  202/., 
251,  260 

Burnet,   Prof.  J..   174,   237 

Butler,    188,   235 

Carlyle,   185 

Carr,  Prof.  J.  Wildon,  121,  228  n. 

Cassiodorus,  47  n. 

Causality,   217 

Christianity,  20,  31/.,  37,  40, 
42^.,  51,  61,  65/.,  69,  72, 
81  j^".,  100,  102/.,  107,  125, 
141,  145 «..  163/.,  179/., 
19^  ff.,  202,  209/.,  213,  238, 
240,  273  #. 

Chrysippus,   37 

Cicero,  37/.,  44 

Coleridge,  77,  163,  271 

Comte,  71/. 

Copying,  204/. 


278 


INDEX 


Courage,  21 

Cowper,  208 

Crashaw,  227 

Creation,   155  ff-,   184,  197/. 

Croce,    Sig.    Benedetto,     121  n., 

157 ff.,  i6i,  176,  ig6ff.,  2IO, 

216  n.,  231,  266 

Dante,    125  ff.,    141  /.,    195  n., 

232/.,  246 
Delphic  Oracle,  177 
Descartes,  53,  56 j5^.,  63,  230 
Deuteronomy,  43 
Dickens,  262 
Driesch,  Prof.  Hans,  17 
Duns  Scotus,  55  n. 
Durandus    a    Sancto    Porciano, 

56  n.,  68  n. 
Dttrer,  268/. 
Durkheim,  217 

Ecclesiastes,  270 
Elisha  ben  Abuyah,  86  n. 
Emanation,  155/.,  162 
Epicureanism,  79/. 
Essentia,  38,  44 
Euclid,  50 
Euhemerus,  76 
Euripides,  77  j5^. 
Eutyches,  47 
EvU.  185  #. 
Exodus,  86 
Ezekiel,  40  n. 

Farquhar,  Dr.  J.  N.,  88  n, 
Feuerbach,  22 
Fichte,  121  ff.,  128,  268 
Finite  God,  33.  133  #. 
Fitzgerald,  207,  255 
Forgiveness,  249,  252  j5^. 
Fowler,  Mr,  W.  Warde,  75  n. 

Galileo,  63 

Generation,  155  /.,  162,  181 


G«n«st5,  235,  269 

'  George  Eliot,'  22  «. 

Gibbon,  163 

Gibson,  Prof.  J.,  26  n. 

Gifford,     Lord,     17,     27,     31/., 

212,  214,  244 
Goethe,  86  n.,  96 
Goodness,  227,  230 j^". 
Greek  Religion,   76^.,   85,   177, 

249 
Green,     T.    H.,     26  n.,     112  jjT. 

203,  205 
Grierson,  Mr.  G.  A.,  88  n. 

Hadrian,  38  n. 

Harnack,  Prof.  A.,  66 

Heber,  265 

Hebrews,  Epistle  to  the,  39,  199, 

262 
Hegel,  52,  54,  77,  96,  157.   196 
Heraclitus,  115 

Hinduism,  83,  87,  160,  249,  251 
Hippolytus,  45 
History,    25,    iii,    159,    168/., 

175/-.  196,  199 
Hobbes,  49 
Horsley,  64 

Howison,  Prof.  G.  H.,  135 
Hume,  26,  261  n. 
wroKtififvov,  41 
vHtrratnQ,  37,  39  #,  50/-.  54 
Huxley,  188,  205 

Idealism,  205 

Idolatry,  2.t^ff. 

Immanence,  33,  70;^^.,  86,  136/., 

140,  148,  150,  196 
Incarnation,  82,  86,  166 
Incommunicability,  55 
Irenaeus,  38 
Isaiah,  208/. 

James,  William,  ^97,  241/ 
Jeremiah,  40  n 


INDEX 


279 


Jesus  Christ,  20,  31,  39,  62, 
67,  81/.,  84/.,  109,  135  n., 
141/.,  164  j5r.,  179,  182/., 
195,  202/. 

Joachim,  Mr.  H.  H.,  69  n. 

Job,  Book  of,  262 

John,  Epistle  of,  yiff.,  181 

John,  Gospel  of,  139,  163,  209, 
261  n. 

John  of  Damascus,  69  n. 

Joseph,  Mr.  H,  W.  B.,  231 

Judaism,  43/.,  65,  83,  S^ff. 

Judgment,  190,  197 

Justice,  21,  249,  256 jif. 

Juvenal,  35  n. 

Kant,  26,  59,  62  M.,  112,  1x7  ff., 

123,  187/.,  250,  268 
Karma,  249,  251  ff. 
Keble,  147 

Kipling,  Mr    Rudyard,  23 
Knowledge,  zo^ff.,  234 

Lateran,  Fourth  Council  of  the, 

69  «. 
Leibnitz,  59  n.,  97/.,  269 
'  Lewis  Carroll,'  47,  222,  246 
Liberty,  191 
Life,  223  j5^. 
Lloyd,  A.,  88  «. 
Locke,  26,  57,  64 
Logos,   139,  163,  238 
Lotze,     18/.,    52  j5^.,     100,     103, 

106/.,   147,  235 
Love,   125,   148,  232,  274 
Luke,  Gospel  of,  75,  254 

Maimonides,  86 
Malebranche,  157 
Marcion,  137 

Mark,  Gospel  of,  43  «.,  123,  239 
Martin  eau,   119 
Mathematics,  158 
Matter,  41,  223,  228^. 
Mechanism,  224,  230/., 


Mediation,    Mediator,    163,    166, 

171.  ^77 ff:  194.  211 
Mercy,  257/. 
Merz,  Dr.  J.  T.,  22 j5^. 
MiU,  J.  S.,  269 
Milton,  77,  246 
Minucius  Pacatus,  38 
Missale  Romanum,  194/. 
Mohammed,     Mohammedanism, 

65,  83,  87 
MoraUty,  33,  103.  105/..  116 ff., 

188,  191,  231,  235,  238/.,  253 
Moses,  86 
Mundo,  de,  37,  50 
Murray,     Prof.     Gilbert,     71 «., 

78  n.,  272 
Mystery,   199  ff. 
Mystery  Gods,  77/.,  80/. 
Mysticism,  87,  259 
Myth,  Mythology,  1^7  ff.,  177  ff., 

194 

Naturalism,  205 

Nature,  136/.,  235,  240,  270/. 

Necessity,  191 

Neo-Platonism,  163 

Nestorius,  47 

Nettleship,  R.  L.,  172  n. 

Newton,  63 

Nietzsche,  77 

Nirvana,  260 

Nitzsch,  Friedrich,  47  n. 

Non-Contradiction,    107,    124/, 

191 
Number,  217 

Objective,  57 

Ockham,  56  n.,  58 

Oesterley,  Dr.  W.  O.  F.,  86  ». 

Oljmapian  gods,  77  ff. 

Origen,  42/. 

ohtria,  42/. 

Paley,  63  n.,  65,  188 
Pantheism,  69,  87 


280 


INDEX 


Parmenides,  94 

Particular,  201/, 

Party,  35/. 

Paul,    St.,    135  n.,    152,    164  ff., 

183,  199,  203,  208 
Paul  of  Samosata,  61  «.,  68  «. 
Peter  Lombard,  90  n 
Philo,  39 
Philosophy,    158/.,    161,    i6yff., 

175/-.  2i3#.,  220 
Plato,  50/.,  64,  94,  104,  164/., 

168  ff.,  177,   194,  210/..  231, 

233  #• 
Pliny,  71,  75 
Plotinus,  42/.,  51,   174 
Plutarch,  37  n.,  268 
Political  Philosophy,  33 
Pope,  225 
Porphyry,  43 
Posidonius,  37 

Prayer,  Book  of  Common,  201 
Priestley,  63/. 

Principium  Individuationis ,  91 
Pringle-Pattison,     Prof.    A.     S., 

107  n.,   125  n. 
Probation,    190 
irpo(T(i)7relov     46 
irpocTtDtrov,    45/.,   5 1 

Providence,  198 

Psalms,    the,    30,    40,    132,    153, 

178,  204,  254/. 
Pseudo-Aristotle,  37,  50 
Pseudo-Augustine,  38  n. 

'  Questionnaire,'  243 
Quick,  Mr.  O.,   194 
Quicunque  vult,   130/.,  210 
Quintihan,  38/. 

Racovian  Catechism,  62 
Rashdall,  Dr.  H.,   135,  259 «. 
Rationalism,   199 
Realism,   149,  205/. 
Reid,  24  n. 
Repentance,   190,  195 


Revelation,  33,   177 
Reverence,   119,   267 
Rhys  Davids,  Prof.  T.  W.,  203 
Richard  of  St.  Victor,   55 
Robertson,  261  n. 
Roman  Religion,   75,  79 
Royce,   17,   128 «.,   159 «.,  242 
Russell,  Mr.  Bertrand,   189 

Sacrifice,  249,  256,  258  /. 
Schiller,   117 

Schleiermacher,  63  n.,  65 
Scholasticism,   156,  204,   222 
Science,   25/.,   inf.,   158,  234 
Self-consciousness,  55,  57/. 
Seneca,   "ij ff. 
Servetus,  62  n. 
Sextus  Empiricus,   115  «. 
Shakespeare,     20,     127,     151/-, 

222,  245/.,  268 
Shebbeare,  Mr.     C.     J.,     268  n., 

272  w. 
Shelley,  80,   154,   197 
Sherlock,  56  ?t,  57  «. 
Sidonius  Apollinaris,  38  n. 
Sin,   183  #.,  249  ff- 
Smith,  Prof.  J.  A.,   156  n. 
Socinus,  62 
Socrateitas,  92 
Socrates   (philosopher),  94,   169, 

173.  233/ 
Socrates  (historian),  38 
Solomon,  256 
Soul,  90,  164/.,  168,  171  #.,  177, 

202,  237 
South,  57  n. 
Space,  22,  217 
Spencer,  Herbert,  149/- 
Spinoza,    68^.,    132,    196,    214, 

222/.,  255 
Starbuck,  Prof.  E.  D.,  241 
State,    the,     18.    29,    52,    146, 

164/. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,   189,  246 
Stoics,  37,   178,  255 


INDEX 


281 


Straightaess,  21 

Stuckenberg,  J.  H.  W.,   119 

Subject,  57 

Subjecti>'e,  56/. 

Substance,  Substantia,  37 ff.,  44, 

222  ff. 
Suetonius,  35  n. 
Swinburne,  219 

Temple,  Dr.  W.,  268  n. 
Tennyson.    30,    95,   255,    270  /., 

274 
Teresa,  St.,  227 
Tertullian,  27,  44/.,  66/.,   137 
Theodorus  of  Gadara,  38  n. 
Thomas    Aquinas,    64,    75,    90, 

273  w. 
Thompson,  Francis,  208 
Thompson,  James,  271 
Time,  22,  201/.,  217 
Transcendence,    33,    70,    73,    75, 

140,   i^Sff.,   196,  248 
Trinity,  20,  42^.,  51,  57,  6i#., 

82,     102,     130,     145  n.,     161, 

213,  272^. 
Turner,  EUzabeth,  246 


Turretinus,  56  n.,  69  n. 
Tyrrell,  George,  227  n. 

Union,   249,  256,  259/. 
Unitarianism,  62 ff.,  84/.,  160/., 

163 
Unity,  218,  220 ff. 
Universal,   175,  201,  22off. 
Usener,  Hermann,  47  n. 

Valentinus  Gentilis,  62  n. 
Virgil,  246 

Wallace,  W.,  59  n. 

Warren,  H.  C,  203 

Watson,  Sir  W.,  29 

Wells,  Mr.  H.  G..  103  j^.,  135  #., 

147.   192/. 
Will,  55,  59 
Wilson,  J.  Cook,   119  w. 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,  39 
Wolff,  58,  62  n. 
Wordsworth,  28,   122,   171,   178, 

200,  270 

Zeller,  37  «. 


